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EARLY  ENGLISH  CHURCH   HISTORY 


BRIGHT 


HENRY  FROWDE,  M.A. 

PUBLISHER  TO  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  OXFORD 


LONDON,   EDINBURGH,   AND   NEW  YORK 


Earjy  EngUsK  Church  Sistx>ry 


CHAPTERS 


OF 


EARLY  ENGLISH  CHURCH  HISTORY 


BY 


WILLIAM    BRIGHT,   D.D. 

REGIUS    PROFESSOR   OF    ECCLESIASTICAL    HISTORY 
AND    CANON   OF   CHRIST   CHURCH,    OXFORD 


THIRD   EDITION 
REVISED  AND  ENLARGED 


WITH  A  MAP 


0;cfotr6 

AT   THE    CLARENDON    PRESS 

M  DCCd  XCVII 


D 


Oxford 

PRINTED   AT   THE   CLARENDON    PRESS 

BY   HORACE   HART,    M.A. 
PRINTER  TO   THE    UNIVERSITY 


HENRY  MORSE  STEPHENS 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION. 


The  following  Chapters  are  an  expansion  of  Lectures 
which  have  been  delivered  to  my  Class,  while  we  had 
Bede's  '  History '  before  us  with  a  view  to  the  Theological 
Final  School.  Wishing  to  connect  them,  in  their  present 
form,  with  their  original  purpose,  I  have  retained  a  few 
colloquial  phrases,  and  a  few  local  allusions,  which  seemed 
natural  in  addressing  a  number  of  Oxford  students,  of 
whom  several  were  personally  well  known  to  me. 

The  first  or  introductory  Chapter  is  devoted  to  the 
history  of  the  ancient  British  Church.  The  general 
subject  of  the  rest  of  the  volume  is  the  Age  of  the 
Conversion  of  the  Old-English  people  to  Christianity: 
a  great,  though  comparatively  a  brief  period,  extending 
but  little  beyond  a  century,  and  closing  naturally  with 
the  death,  in  709,  of  their  greatest  native  Bishop,  him- 
self the  evangelizer  of  those  among  them  who,  from  a 
peculiar  isolation,  were  the  last  to  receive  the  Faith. 

My  obligations  to  the  'Councils  and  Ecclesiastical 
Documents,'  edited  by  the  late  Mr.  Haddan  and  by  Pro- 
fessor Stubbs,  will  be  apparent  throughout  these  pages. 
But  I  have  enjoyed  the  special  advantage  of  repeatedly 
consulting  the  Professor  himself,  who,  with  characteristic 
kindness,  found  time  to  read  through  the  larger  portion 

514533 


vi  Preface  to  the  First  Edition, 

of  what  follows  before  it  was  offered  to  the  Delegates  of 
the  Clarendon  Press ;  to  whom  also  my  thanks  are  due 
for  their  ready  acceptance  of  it  in  order  to  publication. 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  associate  this  book  with  the  remem- 
brance of  those  many  attendants  at  my  Lectures,  on 
this  and  other  subjects,  who,  by  their  intelligent  and 
sympathetic  interest,  have  again  and  again  rendered  me 
assistance  at  once  more  welcome  and  more  effective  than 
at  the  time  they  could  understand. 

Christ  Church: 
Dec.  20,  1877. 


PEEFACE  TO  THE  THIRD  EDITION. 


In  sending  forth  tliis  enlarged  edition  during  the 
'  thirteenth  centenary '  of  the  arrival  of  St.  Augustine 
in  England,  and  therefore  of  the  foundation  of  '  the 
Church  of  the  English,'  I  may  well  congratulate  all  who 
are  interested  in  our  national  Church  history  on  the 
appearance  of  an  edition  of  Bede's  ^  Historia  Ecclesiastica,' 
together  with  his  ^  Historia  Abbatum  -*  and  his  '  Epistola 
ad  Ecgbertum,-'  by  the  Eev.  Charles  Plummer,  Fellow  of 
Corpus  Christi  College.  His  two  volumes  will  be  found 
indispensable  for  the  serious  study  of  these  'fontal' 
documents ;  and  one  may  perhaps  wish  that  he  could 
have  included  the  '  Vita  Cuthberti '  within  the  scope  of 
his  most  opportune  publication. 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  express  my  obligation  to  Mr.  Charles 
Oman,  Fellow  and  Librarian  of  All  Souls  College,  author 
of 'Europe,  476-918,''  'A  History  of  England,'  &c.,  for  assis- 
tance in  the  preparation  of  a  map  intended  to  represent 
the  English  dioceses  at  the  close  of  the  seventh  century ; 
and  to  my  friend  the  Eev.  E,.  Gr.  Fookes,  Eector  of  Lea, 
Lincolnshire,  a  devoted  student  of  Bede,  for  the  recon- 
struction of  the  index,  which  has  been  to  him,  as  I  well 
know,  a  veritable  '  labour  of  love.' 

Another  word  or  two  by  way  of  tribute  to  a  memory- 
worthy  of  all  honour.  The  phrase,  *  the  present  Bishop 
of  St.  David's'  (p.  35),  is  now  no  longer  applicable  to 


viii  Preface  to  the  Third  Edition, 

Bishop  Basil  Jones.  One  who  was  formerly  associated 
with  him  as  a  brother-Fellow  in  University  College  may 
be  permitted  to  recall,  with  grateful  respect,  the  signal 
combination  of  the  unfailing  kindness  of  a  friend  with 
the  full  and  exact  knowledge  of  a  great  archaeological 
scholar.  Forty-one  years  have  passed  since,  in  co- 
operation with  Edward  Augustus  Freeman,  he  published 
a  quarto  volume  on  '  The  History  and  Antiquities  of 
St.  David's  ^— a  work  which  gave  abundant  promise  of 
that  habitual  accuracy  in  statement  and  steady  balance 
of  judgement  which  were  inseparable  from  his  deep  affec- 
tion for  the  ancient  Church  of  the  Cymry.  Few  men 
ever  had  such  aptitude  for  bringing  English  and  Welsh 
Churchmen  to  understand  and  sympathize  with  each 
other;  and  no  man  ever  did  more  for  that  good  end 
than  he  during  his  long  tenure  of  the  primary  Welsh 
bishopric. 

Christ  Church: 
May  22,  1897. 


NOTE  TO  PEEFACE. 


SiiTCE  the  following  pages  were  sent  to  the  press,  I  have 
had  the  advantage  o£  reading  some  of  the  proof-sheets  of  the 
volume  on  'The  Mission  of  St.  Augustine  to  England/  which, 
according  to  the  late  Archbishop  Benson's  desire,  is  being 
edited  by  Canon  Mason.  One  of  the  essays  contained  in  it 
is  on  'The  Landing-place  of  St.  Augustine.^  The  author. 
Professor  Hughes  of  Cambridge,  discusses  the  question  from 
a  geographical  and  geological,  as  well  as  from  an  historical 
standpoint;  and  while  admitting  that  'if  the  missionaries 
landed  at  all  upon  the  right-hand  side  of  the  main  channel  of 
the  Wantsome,-*  a  spot  '  west  of  the  promontory  of  Ebbsfleet 
would  doubtless  be  a  good  place  .  .  .  /  he  adds,  '  yet  the  plead- 
ings on  behalf  of  Ebbsfleet  are  not  entirely  convincing ; '  and 
he  practically  adheres  to  'the  Canterbury  tradition'  that 
Rutupiae,  or  Eichborough,  was  in  fact  the  landing-place. 
But  then  comes  the  difficulty,  that  according  to  the  'plain 
words ■*  of  Bede,  whose  'authority^  is  'unexceptionable,' 
Augustine  and  his  companions  landed  in  the  Isle  of  Thanet, 
whereas  Richborough  is  not  in  Thanet.  Professor  Hughes 
would  meet  this  by  the  suggestion  that  Thorn,  the  chronicler 
of  St.  Augustine's  Abbey,  says  expressly, '  Applicuerunt  vero 
in  insula  de  Taneth  in  loco  qui  dicitur  Retesbourgh  j  ^  and  that 
Richborough  was  for  many  centuries  partially  insulated,  and 
might  be  accounted  by  Canterbury  monks  as  in  fact  belong- 
ing to  Thanet.  Here  it  should  be  remembered  that  Thorn 
wrote  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fourteenth  century;  and  it 
does  not  seem  impossible  that  by  that  time  an  incorrect 
tradition  should  have  attached  itself  to  a  venerable  locality. 


X  Note  to  Preface, 

At  any  rate,  neither  the  statement  that  Augustine  landed  at 
Richborough  nor  the  statement  that  he  there  had  the  con- 
ference with  Ethelbert  can  be  easily  reconciled  with  Bedels 
language,  unless  we  suppose  that  in  Bedels  time  the  course  of 
the  Wantsome — which,  as  he  says,  divides  'Tanatos^  from  the 
mainland — had  actually  run  loestwarcl  of  Richborough,  and  so, 
of  course,  had  included  Richborough  within  Thanet.  In 
default  of  such  a  supposition  it  seems  safer  to  acquiesce  in 
some  form  of  the  Ebbsfleet  theory  for  the  landing-place,  and 
to  accept  Minster  as  the  scene  of  the  ever-memorable  meeting. 
In  the  same  volume,  Mr.  H.  A.  Wilson,  Fellow  of  Mag- 
dalen College,  a  well-known  authority  on  ritual  and  liturgical 
questions,  suggests  as  a  j)ossihle  account  of  the  baptismal 
peculiarities  of  the  British  rite  that  the  Britons,  at  least 
'  occasionally,'  baptized  ^  without  the  invocation  of  the 
Trinity' — an  omission  which,  according  to  a  long-subse- 
quent letter  of  Pope  Zacharias  to  St.  Boniface,  was  pro- 
nounced by  an  ^English  synod ^  to  make  such  baptism  null. 
But  I  cannot  think  that  this  synod  is  implicitly  dated 
by  Zacharias  in  the  archiepiscopate  of  Augustine;  for  the 
sentence  in  question  names  four  of  his  successors,  including 
Theodore.  And  if  so  grave  an  omission  had  come  under 
discussion  at  ^  Augustine's  Oak,^  we  can  hardly  suppose  that 
he  would  have  contented  himself  with  requiring  conformity 
to  the  ^  mos  sanctae  Romanae  et  apostolicae  ecclesiae,''  when  he 
could  have  taken  so  much  stronger  ground  by  exhorting  the 
British  ecclesiastics  to  adhere  to  the  form  expressly  pre- 
scribed by  Christ  (Matt,  xxviii.  19).  Nor  would  'compleatis' 
have  been  a  term  appropriate  if  such  a  negligence  had  been 
the  point  requiring  correction. 

2.  I  have  also  seen  a  paper  entitled  '  The  Abbess  Hilda^s 
First  Religious  House,''  by  the  Rev.  H.  C.  Savage,  Vicar  of 
St.  Hilda's,  South  Shields,  in  which  my  rendering  of  ^ad 
septentrionalem  plagam  Viuri  fluminis,^  in  Bede  iv.  23,  is  very 
courteously  questioned.  Mr.  Savage  would  take  the  words  in 
a  more  general  sense  as  referring  to  '  the  district  north  of  the 
river  Wear,^  and  he  pleads  for  his  own  locality  as  representing 
the  Mocus  unius  familiae^  where  Hilda  dwelt  'for  one  year 
with  a  very  few  companions.'  Now,  no  use  of  'plaga^  by  Bede 
otherwise   than   in   connexion  with  a   river  can   be   deemed 


Note  to  Preface,  xi 

relevant.  There  are  three  such  passages:  in  ii.  5^  9,  the 
Humber  is  mentioned  as  the  southern  boundary  o£  a  great 
kingdom,  which  confessedly  stretched  far  away  to  the  north ; 
in  ii.  I  :^,  some  place  near  the  river  Idle  is  clearly  indicated  as 
the  scene  of  Redwald's  victory^  and  Mr.  Savage  himself  speaks 
of  '  the  battle  of  Eetford/  But  the  point  is_,  that  if  Hilda's 
first  settlement  had  not  been  near  the  Wear  northward,  Bede 
would  have  had  no  occasion  for  mentioning  that  river  in  con- 
nexion with  it;  especially  when  we  find  that  he  repeatedly 
speaks  (Vit.  Cuthb.  3,  0^^  of  a  religious  house  which  had  once 
been  occupied  by  monks,  but  had  become  a  nunnery  under 
Abbess  Verca  (and  which,  Mr.  Savage  contends,  is  represented 
by  his  own  church),  as  *  not  far  from  the  mouth  of  the  river 
Tyne  southward.'  If  the  settlement  in  question  had  been 
there^  would  not  Bede  have  localized  it  thus,  and  not  with 
a  reference  to  the  north  side  of  another  river  ?  And  as 
it  is  clear  from  Bede  that  Hilda's  first  ^  house,'  which  she 
occupied  in  648-9,  was  not  a  ^  double  monastery ,•*  but  a  very 
small  nunnery,  whereas  the  ^  house  ^  not  far  from  Tynemouth 
was  occupied  by  ^  a  distinguished  company  of  monks ''  some 
time  before  St.  Aidan's  death  in  651,  and  not  by  nuns 
until  afterwards,  the  identification  proposed  appears  also 
chronologically  untenable. 

3.  Once  more,  I  have  seen,  in  a  private  letter  kindly 
addressed  to  me,  a  plea  for  the  identification  of  the  '  ci vitas ' 
of  ^  Tiovulfingacsestir,''  near  which  Paulinus  baptized  many 
converts  ^in  fluvio  Treenta'  (Bede,  ii.  16),  not  with  Little- 
borough,  but  with  Torksey,  a  few  miles  further  south.  Now 
it  is  certain  that  the  formidably  polysyllabic  name  in  question 
means  Hhe  stronghold  of  the  sons  of  Tiowulf.'  What  has 
this  to  do  with  Torksey,  which  evidently  means  ^Tork^s  isle'? 
There  seems  to  be  no  evidence  for  saying  that  the  river  Till 
was  once  called  the  *  Tiovul ' ;  and  it  has  no  other  connexion 
with  the  Trent  at  Torksey  than  by  the  Fossdyke  Water — 
a  canal  which,  whatever  be  its  age,  would  be  out  of  Paulinus^ 
way.  Again,  in  the  Chronicle  for  a.d.  873  we  find  Torksey 
clearly  named  as  ^  Tureces-iege,^  whereas  in  '  Alf red^s  version ' 
of  Bede,  ii.  16,  we  have  '  Teolfinga-ceastre^  plainly  enough, 
and,  as  Mr.  Plummer  points  out  (vol.  ii.  p.  109),  ''^']2i  is 
a  date  earlier  than  that  at  which  the  Anglo-Saxon  version 


xii  Note  to  Preface, 

of  Bede  was  made/  On  the  other  hand,  Littleborough, 
which,  as  Mr.  James  Parker  kindly  informs  me,  still  bears 
traces  of  a  fortification  or  'castrum,'  is  identified  with  Sege- 
locum  (Mon.  H.  Brit.  pp.  cxxxix,  cxliv),  which  is  the  only 
stati'on  between  Lindum  and  Danum  in  the  fifth  Iter  of 
Antoninus.  It  was  natural  that  such  a  ^csester^  (or  ^caes- 
tir-*)  as  the  Tiowulf  family  possessed  should,  after  it  had 
fallen  into  decay,  become  known  as  ^the  Little  Burh^  or 
castle.  And  it  stands  to  reason  that  Paulinus  would  take  the 
Roman  road  when  going  to  or  returning  from  Lincoln ;  and 
the  late  Precentor  Venables  of  Lincoln,  who  was  at  once  a 
local  antiquary  and  an  historical  scholar,  wrote  to  Mr.  Parker 
in  terms  which  I  am  permitted  to  quote  :  ^  Your  identification 
of  Tiovulfingacaester  with  Littleborough,  I  think,  carries  con- 
viction with  it.  It  is  just  the  place  where  Paulinus,  travel- 
ling from  York  via  Doncaster,  would  first  strike  the  Trent.^ 

4.  The  Rev.  F.  B.  A.  WiUiams,  Vicar  of  Hipswell,  Rich- 
mond, kindly  informs  me  that  the  place  which  Gale  calls 
'Ackburgh/  and  Raine  (as  referred  to  below,  p.  150)  '  Ake- 
burgh/  is  known  to  the  inhabitants  only  as  '  Akebar  ^ ;  and 
this  seems  to  be  confirmed  by  Whitaker  in  his  account  of 
Fingall;  but  in  his  account  of  Catterick  he  apparently 
recognizes  *  Aikburgh '  as  the  older  form,  though  he  rejects 
peremptorily  Gale's  derivation  of  the  name  for  *  Jacobus  ^ 
(the  deacon),  and  says  that  ^Aik  is  obviously  meant  for  Oak ' 
(Hist.  Richm.  ii.  21).  Anyhow,  ^  Aikburgh^  or  ^Akeburgh' 
might  easily  be  corrupted  into  *  Akebar.^  Mr.  Williams  thinks 
that  the  scene  of  the  baptisms  by  Paulinus  (below,  p.  137) 
was  ^just  above  Thomborough  on  the  south  bank  of  the 
Swale,'  where,  says  Whitaker,  '  the  Roman  trajectus  over  the 
Swale  appears.' 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTEK  I.     (Intkoductory.) 

The  beginning  of  British  Christianity  unknown       ....  i 

No  proof  of  an  Apostolic  visit 2 

Story  of  Lucius 3 

Tertullian  on  British  Christians .  5 

First  Mission  probably  from  Gaul .  5 

St.  Alban 6 

British  Bishops  at  Council  of  Aries 9 

Few  traces  of  British  Church 11 

Its  orthodoxy 13 

St.  Ninian 14 

Pelagianism  in  Britain 15 

Britons  appeal  to  Gallic  Church 17 

Mission  of  St.  German  and  Lupus 17 

Discussion  with  Pelagians 20 

German  and  Lupus  at  Yerulam 20 

The 'Alleluia  Victory* 21 

Second  Visit  of  German 2a 

The  Saxon  Conquest 34 

Sufferings  of  Britons 25 

Rally  of  the  Britons 26 

Progress  and  Completion  of  the  Conquest 27-29 

Condition  of  British  Nation  and  Church  ...         ...  28 

^  Increpations '  of  Gildas .28 

British  Church  Ritual 32 

British  Colleges  and  Synods 33 

Missionaries  and  Saints 33 

Dubricius  and  David 36 

Flight  of  British  Bishops 38 

What  opening  for  a  Mission  ? 39 


CHAPTER  II. 

St.  Gregory  the  Great 40 

The  Church  and  Slavery 41 

Gregory  and  the  English  boys 43 

Gregory  becomes  Pope 44 

His  plans  for  an  English  Mission      .        , 45 


xiv  Contents, 

PAOK 

Ethelbert  and  Bertha 46 

St.  Augustine  and  his  companions 47 

Misgivings  silenced  by  Gregory         .......  48 

His  commendatory  letters         ........  50 

The  Missionaries  in  Gaul 51 

They  land  in  Kent 5a 

Augustine  before  Ethelbert       ........  53 

Ethelbert's  reply 54 

Augustine  enters  Canterbury    ........  55 

Life  of  Missionaries  in  Canterbury 56 

Baptism  of  Ethelbert 57 

Death  of  St.  Columba 59 

Consecration  of  Augustine 60 

Foundation  of  Canterbury  Cathedral 6i 

Messengers  sent  to  Gregory .  62 

Gregory's  answers  to  Augustine's  questions 63 

His  view  of  the  Popedom 70 

Question  of  Miracles 7a 

Scheme  for  Bishoprics 75 

Letters  to  Ethelbert  and  Bertha         .......  76 

Treatment  of  Pagan  Temples 78 

Ai-rival  of  Mellitus  and  his  companions 82 


CHAPTER  III. 

First  Conference  with  British  Bishops 84 

Question  of  Easter 86 

Questions  of  Baptismal  Rites  and  Tonsure 91 

Second  Conference     .         .         . 94 

Advice  of  the  Hermit 95 

Augustine's  terms  rejected .         96 

His  prediction 97 

Battle  of  Chester 98 

Bishopric  of  London 100 

Bishopric  of  Rochester .         .101 

*  Church  and  Realm '  in  Kent 102 

Liturgical  arrangements 103 

Monastery  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul 104 

Date  of  Augustine's  death 105 

Consecration  of  Laurence 106 

Archbishopric  fixed  at  Canterbury 107 

Character  of  St,  Augustine ^°^  A 

Overtures  to  the  Irish  Church  fail 109 

St.  Columban no 

Celtic  tenacity .         .  m 

Second  address  to  Britons  fails na 

Dedication  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul's 113 

Death  of  Ethelbert 114 

Eadbald  rejects  the  Faith 115 

Mellitus  expelled  from  London 116 

Story  of  Laurence's  dream 117 

Conversion  of  Eadbald 118 

Redwald's  compromise 119 


Contents.  xv 

PAOE 

Edwin  in  exile 120 

His  mysterious  visitant     .........  121 

Edwin,  King  of  Northumbria 123 

Mellitus,  Archbishop         .         .         « 124 

Disappointment  of  early  hopes  for  the  Mission         .         .         .         .125 

Edwin  a  suitor  for  Ethelburga 126 

Paulinus  sent  to  Northumbria 127 


CHAPTEK  IV. 

St.  Paulinus  at  York 128 

Attempt  on  Edwin's  life 129 

Indecision  of  Edwin 130 

Paulinus  prevails  with  him 132 

Northumbrian  Witenagemot 132 

Christianity  adopted 134 

Political  greatness  of  Edwin 135 

Bishopric  of  York 136 

Mission-labours  of  Paulinus -  •  137 

Estimate  of  his  work 138 

Paulinus  consecrates  Honorius  at  Lincoln 140 

Christianity  in  East-Anglia 141 

Sigebert  and  St.  Felix 142 

St.  Fursey 144 

Cadwallon  and  Penda 145 

Edwin  slain  at  Hatfield 146 

The  '  Hateful  Year ' 147 

Flight  of  Paulinus 148 

Was  his  work  a  failure  ?.........  149 

James  the  Deacon 150 

Battle  of  Heavenfield 151 

Oswald,  King  of  Northumbria 152 

He  sends  to  Hy  for  a  Bishop 154 

Aidan  chosen  Bishop 155 

Question  as  to  his  consecration  .         ......  156 

Aidan  arrives  in  Northumbria 157 

He  settles  at  Lindisfarne 158 

His  position  as  independent  of  Rome 159 


CHAPTER  V. 

Character  of  St.  Aidan 160 

His  work  as  Bishop 162 

His  relations  with  Oswald 163 

His  charity  and  boldness 164 

His  *  error  *  as  to  Easter 165 

Church-work  under  him 166 

Mission  of  St.  Birinus .         .         .  168 

He  preaches  in  Wessex 169 

Baptism  of  Kynegils 170 

Birinus,  Bishop  of  Dorchester 171 

Erconbert,  King  of  Kent 172 


xvi  Contents, 

PAGE 

Death  of  Sigebert  the  East- Anglian i73 

The  Family  of  King  Anna i74 

Battle  of  Maserfield i75 

Death  of  St.  Oswald 176 

Reverence  for  his  sanctity 177 

Anxiety  caused  by  his  death 178 

Oswy,  King  of  Bernicia 179 

Penda  invades  Northumbria 180 

Exile  and  conversion  of  Kenwalch    .         .         .         .         .         .        ,181 

He  regains  his  crown 182 

Church  of  Winchester  founded 183 

Learning  in  Ireland 183 

Agilbert  in  Wessex 185 

Oswin,  King  of  Deira 185 

His  murder 186 

Honours  to  his  memory 187 

Nunneries  in  Northumbria 188 

Death  of  St.  Aidan 189 


CHAPTEK  VI. 

Preparations  for  organization  of  English  Church      ....  190 

Finan,  Bishop  of  Lindisfarne 191 

Paschal  Question  revived 192 

Baptism  of  Peada 193 

Mission  to  Mid-Angles 194 

Baptism  of  Sigebert  the  East-Saxon 195 

Second  Mission  to  the  East-Saxons  under  Cedd        ....  196 

Foundation  of  Lastingham 198 

Deusdedit,  Archbishop 199 

Death  of  King  Anna 200 

Penda's  last  invasion  of  Northumbria 201 

Battle  of  Winwidfiold 202 

Mercian  Bishopric  founded 204 

Murder  of  Sigebert 205 

St.  Botulf 206 

Wulfhere,  King  of  Mercia 207 

Church  work  under  Wulfhere 208 

Wini,  Bishop  of  Winchester 209 

South-Saxons  still  Heathen 210 

Colman,  Bishop  of  Lindisfarne .  211 

English  Students  in  Ireland 212 

Monasticism  in  Northumbria 213 

Cuthbert  at  Melrose  and  Ripon          .         .         .         .         .        .         .  214 

Beginnings  of  Wilfrid 216 

Benedict  Biscop 217 

Wilfrid  at  Lindisfarne  and  at  Lyons         .        .         .        .         .         .217 

His  first  visit  to  Rome 219 

He  returns  to  Northumbria  and  becomes  Abbot  of  Ripon         .        .  221 

His  aims  for  his  native  Church 222 

Conference  of  Whitby 223 

Paschal  Question  brought  to  an  issue 224 


Contents.  xvii 

PAGE 

Pleas  for  and  against  Celtic  Easter 225 

Decision  against  it 230 

Colman  leaves  Lindisfarne 231 

Gains  and  losses  in  the  Latin  triumph 233 

Character  of  the  Scotic  Clergy 233 


CHAPTEE  VII. 

Tuda,  Bishop  of  Lindisfarne 236 

The  <  Yellow  Pest ' ;  237 

Apostasy  of  some  East-Saxons  ...;....  238 

Cuthbert,  Prior  of  Melrose 239 

Wilfrid  elected  at  York      ...» 240 

Consecration  of  Wilfrid  in  Gaul .241 

He  returns  from  Gaul 243 

Consecration  of  Chad  for  York 244 

Third  Mission  to  East-Saxons 247 

Simony  of  Wini 247 

Wilfrid  in  Mercia  and  Kent 248 

Election  and  death  of  Wighard 249 

Pope  Vitalian's  letter          ...»         .^        ...         .  250 

Theodore  chosen  for  Canterbury 252 

Monothelite  Controversy 253 

Consecration  of  Theodore 254 

Theodore  detained  in  Gaul 255 

His  arrival  in  Canterbury .         .  256 

His  character 257 

His  reception  in  England 258 


CHAPTEE  VIII. 

Theodore  and  St.  Chad 259 

Question  of  Chad's  consecration 261 

His  episcopate  at  Lichfield 263 

His  piety  and  death 264 

Egfrid  succeeds  Oswy  in  Northumbria 266 

Wilfrid's  church-building  and  pastoral  activity         ....  267 

Grandeur  of  his  position 270 

School  at  Canterbury .         .271 

Monasticism  in  Kent 272 

Lothere,  Bishop  of  Winchester 273 

Council  of  Hertford  ;  its  decrees 274 


CHAPTEE   IX. 

East- Anglian  diocese  divided 285 

Queen  Etheldred 286 

Foundation  of  Ely 287 

Disorders  at  Coldingham  followed  by  ruin 289 

Ethelred  succeeds  Wulfhere 291 

Deposition  of  Winfrid .        .  292 

b 


xviii  Contents. 

PAas 

Erkenwald,  Bishop  of  London 293 

Aldhelm,  Abbot  of  Malmosbiiry 294 

Heddi,  Bishop  of  Winchester 297 

Design  for  a  Monastery  at  Abingdon 298 

Mercian  Invasion  of  Kent 299 

Putta  at  Hereford 300 

Cuthbert,  Prior  of  Lindisfarne 301 

He  retires  to  Fame  and  lives  as  a  hermit 303 

Foundation  of  Wearmouth 307 

Ceolfrid,  Easterwine,  and  Sigfrid 308 

St.  Hilda  at  Whitby 310 

Caedmon 31a 


CHAPTER   X. 

Beginning  of  Wilfrid's  troubles 317 

Egfrid  alienated  from  him 317 

Division  of  Northumbrian  diocese  by  Egfrid  and  Theodore      .         .  319 

Wilfrid's  first  appeal  to  Rome  :  he  is  deprived  of  York    .         .         .  321 
Views  of  Roman  See  taken  by  Wilfrid,  and  by  English  Church  in 

general         ...........  323 

Wilfrid  in  Friesland  and  Lombardy 327 

Council  of  Rome  decides  in  his  favour 330 

He  takes  part  in  another  Roman  Council          .....  335 

Return  of  Wilfrid 33^ 

Roman  decree  rejected  by  Egfrid       .......  337 

Imprisonment  of  Wilfrid 338 

His  release          ...........  339 

His  stay  in  Mercia  and  in  Wessex 340 

He  withdraws  into  Sussex 341 

State  of  the  South  Saxons 342 

Wilfrid  converts  them 344 

His  I  piscopate  at  Selsey    .........  346 


CHAPTER   XI. 

Mercian  diocese  divided 349 

Saxon  Monastery  at  Glastonbury 35a 

Mission  of  John  the  Precentor 354 

Council  of  Hatfield 35^ 

Question  of  Double  Procession 3^ 

Death  of  John  the  Precentor 3^ 

Death  of  St.  Hilda 363 

Bishopric  at  Abercorn 3^4 

Foundation  of  Jarrow '    .         .         •  3^5 

Bede 367 

Egfrid's  attack  on  Ireland  .         .         .         .  .         .         •         -371 

Assembly  at  Twyford 373 

Cuthbert,  Bishop  of  Lindisfarne 374 

Egfrid  attacks  the  Picts 375 

Cuthbert  at  Carlisle 37^ 

Battle  of  Dunnechtan         ......•••  377 

See  of  Abercorn  abandoned 37^ 


Contents.  xix 

PAGE 

Aldfrid,  King  of  Northumbria 379 

St.  Cuthbert's  episcopal  work   .         .         .         .         .        .         .         .381 

He  revisits  Carlisle 383 

He  returns  to  Fame 384 

Cuthbert's  last  days 385 

His  death 387 

Death  of  Easterwine  :  Sigfrid,  Abbot 389 

Benedict's  last  return  from  Rome 390 

Cadwalla  and  Wilfrid 391 

Cadwalla,  King  of  Wessex 392 

Conquest  of  the  Isle  of  Wight 393 

Conversion  of  its  people     .........  394 

Theodore  reconciled  to  Wilfrid  ........  395 

Wilfrid  restored  to  York 396 

The  first  compromise 397 

John,  Bishop  of  Hexham 398 

Eadbert,  Bishop  of  Lindisfarne 400 

Death  of  Benedict  Biscop  .         .         ,         .         .         ,         .         ,         .  401 

Cadwalla  goes  to  Rome       .........  403 

His  baptism  and  death  at  Rome 404 

Ine,  King  of  West-Saxons 405 

Death  of  Archbishop  Theodore 406 


CHAPTER  XII. 

State  of  Church  and  Kingdoms  at  Theodore's  death         ,        .         .  409 

Laws  of  King  Ine 410 

Renewal  of  Wilfrid's  troubles 411 

Questions  for  Wilfrid 412 

Wilfrid  in  Mercia 415 

Missions  to  Friesland 416 

Failure  of  Wictbert's  mission 417 

St.  Willibrord's  mission     .         .         .         .         ,        ,         .         .         .418 

Swidbert,  Missionary  Bishop 419 

Martyrdom  of  tlie  Hewalds 420 

Willibrord's  missionary  episcopate 421 

Bertwald,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 422 

Death  of  St.  Erkenwald 423 

Piety  and  death  of  King  Sebbi 424 

Egwin,  Bishop  of  Worcester 424 

Laws  of  King  Wihtred 427 

TJie  '  Privilege  '  of  Wihtred 429 

Guthlac  at  Crowland  .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .431 

Foundation  of  Evesham 435 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

Death  of  Bishop  Eadbert 437 

Letter  of  Pope  Sergius 438 

Council  of  Easterfield 439 

Wilfrid's  second  appeal 44a 

Wilfrid  again  in  Mercia 443 

b2 


XX 


Contents, 


St.  Aldhelm  writes  to  encourage  'Wilfrid's  clerks' 

Acca 

Wilfrid's  last  journey  to  Rome 

Pope  John  VI     . 

Council  of  Rome 

Decision  of  the  Council 

Letter  of  Pope  John  . 

Wilfrid  at  Meaux 

Wilfrid  welcomed  by  Ethelred 

Aldfrid  refuses  to  receive  him 

Death  of  Aldfrid 

Council  of  the  Nidd  . 

Final  Compromise  in  the  '  Cause  of  Wilfrid 


PAOK 

444 
447 
448 

449 
450 
452 
453 
454 
455 
456 
457 
458 
459 


CHAPTEK   XIV. 


Aldhelm's  letter  to  Geraint  on  British  Easter  and  Tonsure 

Gradual  surrender  of  Celtic  Easter 

Daniel,  Bishop  of  Winchester 

Aldhelm,  Bishop  of  Sherborne 

Church  work  in  Wessex     , 

Death  of  St.  Aldhelm 

Complaint  against  Bede    . 

Wilfrid's  last  arrangements 

His  journey  into  Mercia    . 

His  death  .... 

Retrospect  .... 


463 
467 
469 
472 
473 
474 
475 
476 

477 
479 
480 


ADDITIONAL   NOTES. 


A.  Christian  adoption  of  Pagan  Sites 485 

B.  Bede  and  Gregory  of  Tours 485 

C.  Theodore  and  Chad 489 

D.  The  Council  of  Hertford 490 

E.  The  Age  of  St.  Aldhelm 493 

F.  Growth  of  a  Parochial  System  in  England 494 

G.  Miscellaneous  (i-ii) 496 

Table  of  Principal  Events '  .         .        .  501 

Table  of  Royal  and  Episcopal  Succession,  A.  D.  597-709    .         .         .  502 

Genealogical  Tables 504 

Index 507 


CHAPTERS  OF 
EARLY  ENGLISH  CHURCH  HISTORY. 

CHAPTER  I. 

(Intkoductory.) 

When  was  the  Christian  Faith  first  preached  in  Britain  ?  The  begiu- 
The  question  is  one  whicK  it  is  impossible  not  to  ask,  but  known^^ 
which  it  is  also  impossible  to  answer.  Answers,  no  doubt,  have 
been  suggested,  with  more  or  less  of  definiteness  and  con- 
fidence :  but  they  appear  to  possess  no  trustworthy  founda- 
tion^.    The  pious  fancy  which  led  some  of  our  ecclesiastical 
antiquaries'^  to  think  that  St.  Paul,  between  his  first  and 
second  imprisonments,  had  made  his  way  to  the  great  north- 
western island,  the  southern  part  of  which  had  been  recently 
'  pacified  '  by  the  stern  hand  of  Suetonius  Paulinus,  appealed   ; 
for  its  chief,  if  not  its  only,  support  to  a  single  sentence 
of  St.  Clement  of  Rome  "^  in  which  Paul  is  said  to  '  have 
come  to  the  boundary  of  the  west,' — a  phrase  most  naturally 

'  'We  see  the  light  of  the  Word  shined  here,  but  see  not  who  kindled 
it.'     Fuller,  Ch.  Hist.  p.  5. 

^  Soames  favours  the  notion,  and  cites  Bishop  Burgess's  positive 
language  in  support  of  it  :  Angl.-Sax.  Ch.  p.  22.  But  '  our  native 
documents,'  says  the  enthusiastic  author  of  the  'Ecclesiastical  Antiquities 
of  the  Cymry,'  '  are  silent  respecting  the  alleged  arrival  of  St.  Paul  in 
Britain'  (p.  60). 

^  S.  Clem.  Ep.  ad  Cor.  5  :  km  rd  repfxa  rrjs  Svatcvs  iKOojv. 

B 


2  No  Proof  of  an  Apostolic  Visit, 

interpreted  of  Spain '.  Eiisebius,  it  is  true,  speaks  as  if  some 
of  the  Twelve  cr  of  ike,  Seveiiiy  Siad  'px-ossed  the  Ocean  to 
the  isles  called  British  ^ ; '  but  he  is  here  rhetorically  mixing 
up  the  work  of  all  ancient  missionaries  with  that  of  the 
original  disciples  of  Christ ;  and  when  in  his  '  History '  he 
speaks  distinctly,  in  reliance  on  Origen,  of  the  mission - 
fields  of  the  Apostles,  he  omits  Britain  altogether  ^.  Some 
language  of  Theodoret,  which  combines  St.  Paul  with  the 
other  Apostles,  speaks  of  them  as  having  evangelized 
the  .Britons ;  but  this  must  be  taken  along  with  his  after- 
statement,  that  it  was  '  after  the  Apostles'  death  that  the 
laws  of  the  Crucified  penetrated  to  Persians,  Scythians,  and 
the  other  barbarous  nations*.'  The  precarious  identification 
of  the  Pudens  and  Claudia  of  St.  Paul's  last  Epistle  with 
the  Pudens  and  the  British-born  Claudia  whose  marriage 
Martial  greeted  in  verses  published  some  twenty  years  after 
St.  Paul's  death -^  would  prove  nothing,  were  it  made  good, 
as  to  a  Church  in  Britain  at  that  time ;  and  the  like  may 

^  Bishop  Lightfoot,  St.  Clement  of  Rome,  ii.  30  ;  but  he  thinks  it  *  not 
improbable  that  this  western  journey  of  St.  Paul  included  a  visit  to  Gaul 
(2  Tim.  iv.  10).' 

^  Euseb.  Dem.  Ev.  iii.  5,  p.  112. 

3  Euseb.  H.  E.  iii.  i.     See  Lingard,  Angl.-Sax.  Ch.  i.  349. 

*  Theodoret,  Gr.  Aff.  Cur.  disp.  9  (Schulze,  vol.  iv.  p.  929).  Hilary,  in 
Tract,  in  Ps.  xiv.  3,  says  that  '  the  Apostles  prepared  very  many  habitations 
for  God  even  in  the  isles  of  the  ocean  ;*  but  this  implies  no  more  than  the 
wide  spread  of  their  teaching  and  influence.  So  Venantius  Fortunatus. 
in  a  poem  on  the  Life  of  St.  Martin,  b,  3.  1.  494,  says  that  the  same 
Hrumpet'  of  St.  Paul's  written  teaching  'rung  through  the  lands  of  the 
Briton  and  of  utmost  Thule.'     See  Lingard,  i.  355. 

^  See  Martial,  Epigr.  iv.  13.  1,  'Claudia,  Rufe,  meo  nubit  peregrina 
Pudenti,'  &c.;  and  xi.  53.  i,  '  Claudia  caeruleis  cum  sit  Rufina  Britannis 
Edita,'  &c.  This  latter  epigram  refers  to  the  birth  of  her  children.  It  has 
been  observed  that  the  apparent  dates  of  Martial's  life  are  against  the 
identification  in  question :  he  seems  not  to  have  come  to  Rome  before 
A.  D.  66,  and  would  hardly  have  kept  back  such  a  poem  as  iv.  13,  by  accident 
or  design,  till  81.  For  samples  of  arguments  used  by  British  lovers  of 
ecclesiastical  romance,  see  Church  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  xiii.  p.  27,  and 
Guest,  Origines  Celticae,  p.  130.  The  latter  attempts  to  meet  the  objection 
from  Pudens'  intimacy  with  Martial,  and  from  the  gift  by  Pudens 
of  a  site  for  a  temple  at  Chichester  (attested  by  the  inscribed  slab 
found  in  1723),  by  the  bold  suggestion  that  the  Pudens  whom  St.  Paul 
mentions  among  'the  brethren'  in  2  Tim.  iv.  21  was  not  as  yet 
a  Christian.  On  the  whole  subject  see  Bishop  Lightfoot,  St.  Clement 
of  Rome,  i.  77. 


Story  of  Lticms.  3 

be  said  as  to  the  Christianity  of  Pomponia  Graecina,  '.hai-.  i. 
whose  husband  Aulus  Plautius  left  Britain  as  early  as 
A.  D.  47.  In  short,  we  may  pass  by  all  attempts  at  discovery 
of  an  apostolic  foundation  for  the  British  Church  ^ :  the 
theories  which  modern  enthusiasm  has  created  are  as 
shadowy  as  the  Greek  fiction  about  Aristobulus,  ordained 
by  St.  Paul  as  a  bishop  for  Britain  2, — or  the  Welsh  story 
of  Bran  the  Blessed,  father  of  Caractacus,  who  brought 
to  Britain  the  faith  he  had  learned  in  Rome^, — or  that 
beautiful  mediaeval  romance  which  brought  St.  Joseph  of 
Arimathaea  with  twelve  companions  to  Avalon  or  Glaston- 
bury, and  made  his  staff  take  root  in  the  earth,  and  grow 
into  the  famous  '  Holy  Thorn*.' 

But  what  are  we  to  say  of  the  narrative  which  Bede  ^ioij  of 
inserts  into  his  Church  History^,  and  which  tells  how 
Lucius,  a  British  king,  sent  to  Eleutherus,  Bishop  of  Rome, 
a  letter,  entreating '  that  by  his  commission  he  might  be  made 
a  Christian,  and  presently  obtained  the  fulfilment  of  his 
pious  request ;  after  which  the  Britons  retained  the  faith, 
thus  received,  inviolate  and  in  tranquil  peace,  until  the  times 
of  the  Emperor  Diocletian '  ?  This  is  Bede's  statement : 
looking  at  it  as  it  stands,  and  ignoring  the  pretended  reply 
of  Eleutherus  to  Lucius^,  and  the  later  embellishments  as  to 

^  It  is  true  that  Gildas,  after  describing  the  process  by  which  Britain 
became  Roman,  says,  '  Interea,  .  .  .  the  Sun  of  righteousness  first  imparts 
His  beams,  i.  e.  Christ  His  precepts,  which,  although  the}'^  were  languidly 
received  by  the  inhabitants,'  &c.  Hist.  6.  But  Lingard  contends  that  his 
words  are  as  applicable  to  any  year  before  the  fourth  century  as  to  the 
time  of  Boadicea's  defeat.     Angl.-Sax.  Ch.  i.  347. 

^  Whom  the  Welsh  legends  called  Arwystli  Hen. 

•^  See  Williams,  Eccl.  Antiq.  of  the  Cymry,  p.  54  ff.  Archd.  Pryce, 
Ang.-Brit.  Ch.  p.  42. 

*  Malmesbury  gives  the  story  of  Joseph  of  Arimathaea  with  an  *  ut  ferunt ' : 
as  he  knew  it,  we  find  that  it  presupposed  an  apostolic  visit  of  St.  Philip  to 
the  'regie  Francorum*  (Prol.  de  Antiq.  Glaston.  Eccl.).  The  legend  has 
been  gracefully  versified  by  Dean  Alford  in  his  '  Ballad  of  Glastonbury  ' 
(Poems,  i.  16).  But,  although  Glastonbury  was  a  Christian  sanctuary 
before  the  Saxons  conquered  the  district,  the  tale  about  St.  Joseph  is  not 
older  than  the  eleventh  century  ;   see  Pryce,  p.  35. 

^  Bede,  i.  4.     'Gildas  is  significantly  silent,'  Pryce,  p.  4. 

'  Not  cited  by  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  :  first  printed  in  the  twelfth 
year  of  Henry  VIII.  'See  Collier  (who  believes  the  general  statement), 
J.  35. 

B  2 


4  Story  of  Lucius. 

CHAP.  f.  the  employment  of  Fagan  and  Dyvan^,  and  El  van  and 
Medwin*^,  and  still  more,  as  to  the  substitution  of  twenty- 
eight  bishops  for  twenty-eight  flamens^,  and  the  association 
of  Winchester,  Gloucester,  and  St.  Peter's  Cornhill,  with 
the  name  of  Lucius  or '  Lleuer  Mawr*,'  and  the  varieties  of 
statement  as  to  the  king's  latter  days,  which,  by  one  story, 
were  spent  in  a  missionary  episcopate,  and  closed  by  martyr- 
dom, in  Switzerland^,  are  we  to  give  any  credence  to  as 
much  as  we  find  in  Bede  ?  The  answer  seems  to  be,  that 
Bede  derived  the  account  of  Lucius'  message  to  Eleutherus, 
but  not  the  statement  as  to  its  success,  from  the  second  of 
the  two  Catalogues,  so  called,  of  Roman  Bishops,  in  which 
'  Eleutherius '  is  said  to  have  received  a  letter  from  Lucius, 
'  ut  Christianus  efficeretur  per  ejus  mandatum^.'  The  words 
'were  written  in  the  time  and  tone^'  of  Prosper,  although 
the  Catalogue  containing  them  was  not  framed  till  about  a 
century  later,  in  530.  The  statement,  then,  about  Lucius' 
request  is  traceable  to  Rome,  and  to  Rome  in  the  fifth 
century :  the  request,  if  made,  was  made  in  the  latter  part 
of  the  second, — the  accession  of  Eleutherus  being  commonly 
dated  a.d.  177.  There  would  be  no  intrinsic  improbability 
in  the  supposition  that  a  native  prince  in  'the  Roman 
island '  had  requested  instruction  from  the  Roman  Church 

'  See  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  ii.  i.     So  Malmesbury  :  see  Gale,  i.  293. 

^  Named  by  other  Welsh  authorities.  See  the  Llandaff  account  in 
Monast.  Anglic,  vi.  part  3,  p.  1218,  and  Chronicles  of  the  Ancient  British 
Church,  p.  45.  Williams  (p.  67)  tells  us  that  the  king  sent  his  request  by 
these  two,-  and  the  Pope  sent  his  answer  by  Dyvan  and  Fagan,  who  were 
probably  sprung  from  '  royal  captives  taken  to  Rome  with  Caradog.'  Of 
course  there  may  have  been  actual  persons  bearing  the  names  of  Fagan 
and  the  rest,  who  were  afterwards  mixed  up  with  the  Lucius  story. 
A  village  near  Llandaff  is  called  St.  Fagan's  ;  and  four  churches  within 
the  jurisdiction  of  Llandaff  are  called  after  him,  Lucius,  Dyvan,  and 
Medwin  (Williams,  p.  72  ;  Chron.  Brit.  Ch.  p.  49). 

^  Geoffrey,  1.  c.  Elmham,  in  Hist.  Monast.  S.  Aug.  Cant.  p.  134,  speaks 
of  the  '  abrogation '  of  thi-ee  flamens  and  the  substitution  of  three  arch- 
bishops. 

*  That  is,  '  Great  Light : '  Nennius,  18.  (The  book  ascribed  to  *  Nennius' 
is  of  the  ninth  century.)     Williams  names  him  Lleirwg. 

*  Usher,  Ant.  71.  Geoffrey  says  that  Lucius  died  at  Gloucester.  But 
the  worth  of  his  authority  is  nil. 

*  Liber  Pontificalis,  ed.  Duchesne,  i.  pp.  cii,  136. 

'  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  Councils,  i.  25  ;  Haddan's  Remains,  p.  227. 


Tertiillian  on  British  Christians,  5 

in  Christian  belief ;  but  the  lack  of  earlier  authority  has  chap.  1. 
induced  most  modern  writers  to  reject  the  whole  story : 
even  Burton,  though  habitually  moderate  in  his  language, 
denounces  it  as  a  '  fable  ^,'  although  he  adds  that  '  perhaps 
there  was  some  circumstance  about  that  time,  which  was 
favourable  to  the  spreading  of  the  Gospel  in  Britain : '  and  Statement 
it  is  certain  that  not  many  years  after  the  accession  of  y^.^ 
Eleutherus, — probably,  indeed,  between  a.d.  196  and  201, — 
Tertullian^  exultingly  declares  'that  places  in  Britain  not 
yet  reached  by  Romans  were  subjected  to  Christ.'  We 
must  allow  for  his  fervid  readiness  to  believe  any  story  or 
rumour  which  enhanced  the  success  of  Christianity;  and 
a  high  authority  would  explain  the  word  '  inaccessa '  as 
referring  simply  to  Roman  movements  at  that  time  against 
a  British  revolt^, — but  this  is  rather  like  explaining  it 
away*.  At  any  rate,  there  is  TertuUian's  statement,  and 
he  must  have  had  some  reason  for  making  it.  Indeed, 
although  we  are  informed  by  Sulpicius  Severus^  that 
Christianity  was  '  somewhat  late  in  crossing  the  Alps,'  and 
Irenaeus  seems  to  have  known  of  no  Church  in  Britain, 
nor  indeed  in  Northern  GauP,  we  cannot  reasonably  doubt 
that  some  Christians  did  cross  the  Channel  to  our  shore 
during  the  second  century,  if  not  earlier,  and  planted  here 
and  there  some  settlements  of  the  Church.  It  was  '  almost 
certainly  from  GauF ' — certainly   not,  as   far  as   we   can 

^  Burton,  Eccl.  Hist.  ii.  206.  Milman  says  briefly,  *  The  conversion  of 
King  Lucius  is  a  legend  ; '  but  he  adds  that  *  Britain  gradually  received 
the  faith  during  the  second  and  third  centuries  : '  Lat.  Chr.  ii.  226. 

2  Tertull.  adv.  Jud.  7.  According  to  Bishop  Kaye  (On  Tertullian, 
p.  61),  the  tract '  Against  the  Jews '  was  probably  written  before  Tertullian 
became  a  Montanist.  That  event  is  dated  by  Dr.  Pusey  not  later  than  a.  d. 
201.  Haddan  dates  the  tract  a.  d.  208,  the  year  in  which  Severus  visited 
Britain  (Remains,  p.  223)  ;  yet  see  Bishop  Kaye,  p.  50. 

^  Haddan,  1.  c,  and  Councils,  i.  2. 

*  Bishop  Kaye,  on  Tertullian,  p.  94,  understands  the  passage  as  referring 
to  the  farthest  extremities  of  Britain.  So  Burton,  ii.  207,  'parts  of  the 
island  which  had  not  been  visited  by  the  Romans.'  So  Alb.  Butler,  for 
Sept.  16;  Robertson,  Hist.  Ch.  i.  218;  Bishop  Forbes,  Pref.  to  Arbuthnott 
Missal,  p.  iii. 

^  Sulp.  Sev.  ii.  32.  He  thus  explains  the  fact  that  the  first  martyrdoms 
in  Gaul  were  those  under  M.  Aurelius  (Euseb.  v.  i^. 

^  S.  Iron.  i.  3  (circ.  a.d.  180). 

'  Haddan 's  Remains,  p.  216.    See  Folcard's  Life  of  St.  John  of  Beverley,  i. 


6         First  Missions  probably  from  Gaul, 

CHAP.  I.  judge,  directly  from  the  East^ — tliat  these  outposts,  so  to 
^"f  •  V'l  •'^P^^k,  of  the  advancing  spiritual  kingdom  were  sent  forth 
evangel-  among  the  Roman  provincials  of  Britain.  Their  arrival 
Oau/" '"  *"^y  with  much  probability  be  dated  shortly  before^,  or 
more  probably  shortly  after  ^  the  persecution  at  Lyons  and 
Vienne;  and  the  Church  thus  formed  was  'confined  mainly' 
(in  the  face  of  Tertullian's  words,  we  can  hardly  say  '  exclu- 
sively ')  to  '  Romanized  natives  * '  and  to  the  Roman  residents 
and  '  struck,  in  consequence,  but  feeble  roots  in  the  land^.' 
More  of  this  hereafter :  at  present  we  pass  on,  in  all  but 
total  dearth  of  information  about  the  British  Church 
in  the  third  century  ^  to  the  grand  and  touching  scene 
which  meets  us  at  the  opening  of  the  fourth,  and  in  which 
the  heroism  of  generous  self-devotedness  is  so  beautifully 
blended  with  that  early-ripened  faith,  which  transfigured 
a  neophyte  into  a  martyr  : — 

Self-offered  victim,  for  his  friend  he  died, 
And  for  the  Faith  ^  ! 

St.  Alhan.      The   story  of   St.  Alban,  as  given  by  Bede^,  is  briefly 
this.     During  the  persecution  of  Diocletian  and  Maximian, 

(Raine's  Historians  of  the  Church  of  York,  i.  24a),  'Ut  enim  fideli 
patrum  traditum  est  relatione,  jamdudum  fide  illuminatis  finibus  totius 
Galliae,  serins  perlatum  est  verbum  Dei  in  hanc  msulam  Britanniae.' 

^  The  popular  notion  that  the  British  Easter-rule  points  to  such  a 
directly  Eastern  origin  of  the  British  Church  is  based  on  a  mistake  as  ta 
that  rule.  Warren  argues  for  an  '  indirect '  Eastern  influence,  through 
the  Gallic  Church,  on  the  British  and  Irish  Churches  ;  Liturgy  and  Ritual 
of  Celtic  Church,  pp.  47-57.     But  see  Engl.  Hist.  Rev.  for  July,  1896. 

"^  Pryce's  Ancient  British  Church,  p.  61  ff.  He  meets  the  difficulty  of 
Irenaeus'  silence  by  observing  that  his  argument  was  concerned  with 
settled  churches,  whose  tradition  could  be  of  weight. 

^  Warren,  p.  58.     Comp.  Acts  xi.  19.  *  Haddan,  1.  c. 

^'  Origen  speaks  of  converted  Biitons  in  Horn.  6  in  Luc.  'The  power 
of  our  Lord  and  Saviour  is  both  with  those  who  in  Britain  are  divided 
from  our  world,*  &c.  (ed.  Lommatzsch,  t.  v.  p.  106)  ;  and  more  rhetorically 
of  a  conversion  of  Bntain,  in  Ezech.  Horn.  4  (xiv.  59).  Yet,  in  Matt.  Com- 
ment, s.  39,  he  says  that  of  the  Britons,  or  the  Gertnans  who  are  near  th^ 
ocean,  &c.,  '  plurimi'  have  not  yet  heard  the  word  of  the  Gospel  (iv.  271). 
These  passages  were  written  towards  the  middle  of  the  third  century. 

*  The  story  of  the  British-born  St.  Mellon,  first  bishop  of  Rouen  in  256, 
represents  him  as  converted  from  Paganism  at  Rome.  See  Usher,  Ant. 
p.  75  ;  Tillemont,  Mem.  iv.  487. 

'  Wordsworth,  Eccl.  Sonnets,  No.  6. 

'  Bede,  i.  7,  and  his  Martyrology.     See  Alb.  Butler,  Lives  of  Saints, 


St.  Alban.  7 

Alban,  being  then  a  Pagan,  gave  shelter  to  a  Christian 
cleric  flying  from  persecution.  He  watched  his  guest's 
habits,  was  struck  with  his  perseverance  in  prayer '  by  day 
and  night,'  gradually  accepted  his  instructions,  embraced 
the  faith,  and  doubtless  was  baptized.  Some  days  were 
spent  in  this  companionship  :  then  the  '  wicked  prince ' 
heard  that  the  fugitive  was  in  Alban's  cottage,  and  sent 
soldiers  to  arrest  him.  Alban  put  on  his  teacher's  cassock  \ 
met  the  soldiers,  gave  himself  into  their  hands,  declaring 
himself  to  be  a  Christian,  and  was  at  once  carried  before 
a  magistrate,  who  was  then  engaged  in  sacrificing,  and  who, 
indignant  at  his  having  thus  shielded  a  '  sacrilegious  rebel,' 
ordered  him  to  be  dragged  up  to  the  images  of  the  gods, 
and  gave  him  the  choice  between  sacrificing  and  suffering 
the  doom  which  the  fugitive  would  have  incurred.  Alban 
replied  that  he  would  not  sacrifice.  Being  asked  of  what 
family  he  was,  he  answered,  '  What  does  that  matter  ?  As 
for  my  religion,  I  am  now  a  Christian,  and  bound  to  act  as 
a  Christian.'  He  was  asked  his  name,  and  gave  it ;  was 
again  ordered  to  sacrifice;  answered,  in  the  usual  tone  of 
Christian  confessors,  that  the  worship  of  '  demons '  would 
lead  to  eternal  perdition ;  was  scourged  by  torturers,  and, 
being  still  steadfast,  was  led  to  execution,  across  the  river  ^ 
which  ran  by  the  great  city  of   Verulamium^,  where  his 

June  22.  In  the  later  middle  ages  the  nationality  of  Alban  was  forgotten  : 
he  was  hailed  in  a  rude  hymn  (reproducing  a  famous  pun)  as  '^j^rotho- 
martyr  Anglorum,  miles  Regis  Angelorum.* 

^  '  Caracalla ; '  the  name  of  that  hooded  coat  stretching  to  the  feet 
which  the  son  and  successor  of  Severus  brought  into  fashion,  and  from 
which  he  took  his  nickname  (Spart.  Vit.  Carac.  9),  and  which  afterwards 
l)ecame  a  dress  of  clerics  or  monks.  Jerome  says  that  the  high-priestly 
ephod  was  like  a  caracalla  without  a  hood  (Ep.  64.  15)  ;  but  the  ephod 
was  a  sort  of  amice,  while  the  caracalla  was  akin  to  a  '  cappa ' ;  Du- 
cange  in  v.  Geoffrey  names  the  cleric  '  Amphibalus  '  (de  Gest.  Reg.  Brit, 
ii.  3).  This  is  probably  a  confusion  between  the  man  and  his  gar- 
ment ;  we  find  an  *  amphibalus '  worn  by  St.  Columba  in  Adamn.  Vit. 
Col.  i.  5  ;  and  see  Gildas,  Epist.  2.  Later  stories  made  '■  Amphibalus ' 
liimself  suffer  martyrdom  near  Verulam,  after  baptizing  many  con- 
verts. See  Usher,  Antiq.  pp.  78,  84,  on  this  name,  and  the  legend 
of  the  death,  as  to  which,  he  says,  the  martyrologists  observe  '  altum 
silentium.' 

'■*  The  Ver.     See  Clutterbuck's  Hertfordshire,  i.  5. 

*  Verulamium  is  mentioned  as  a  municipium  by  Tacitus,  Ann.  xiv.  33. 


8  SL  Alban. 

CHAP.  I.  trial  had  taken  place.  A  vast  crowd  followed  the  prisoner 
and  his  guards,  so  that  the  magistrate  was  left  with  none 
to  wait  on  him.  The  bridge  being  thus  thronged, — so  the 
story  proceeds, — Alban  by  prayer  obtained  a  dry  passage 
over  the  river-bed :  the  executioner  himself,  astounded,  and 
inwardly  stirred  by  grace,  threw  away  his  sword,  and  flung 
himself  at  Al ban's  feet,  desiring  to  sufler  with,  or,  if  possible, 
instead  of  him :  meantime  Alban  and  the  crowd  ascended 
a  beautiful  flower-clad  eminence^,  where  at  his  prayer  a 
spring  of  water  burst  forth  to  satisfy  his  thirst.  Here  he 
was  beheaded  :  the  man  who  gave  the  stroke  miraculously 
lost  his  eyes,  and  he  whose  substitute  he  was  received  in 
his  turn  the  death-blow,  being  thus,  in  the  ancient  Churcli 
language 2,  'baptized  in  his  own  blood.'  The  day  was  the 
22nd  of  June ;  the  magistrate,  overawed  by  what  had  hap- 
pened, ordered  the  persecution  to  cease ;  but  about  the  same 
time  there  were  martyred  Aaron  and  Julius,  two  citizens 
of  *  the  City  of  Legions  ^,' — and  many  others,  men  and 
women,  in  divers  places,  after  they  had  been  '  lacerated '  by 
hideous  torments.  This  is  the  tale  as  it  stands :  if  we  put 
aside  the  three  marvellous  incidents,  as  probably  an  after- 
growth, and  also  allow  for  the  inventiveness  which,  in 
default  of  official  records,  has  described  the  dialogue  be- 
tween Alban  and  his  judge, — is  the  rest  to  be  accepted,  or 
treated  as  mythical?  There  is  no  evidence  that  it  was 
known  earlier  than  the  first  part  of  the  fifth  century  ;  but 

Cunobelin  had  transferred  the  Trinobantian  capital  fi'om  Verulamium  to 
Camulodunum  (Merivale,  vi.  225).  Under  the  Komans  it  became 
'a  grand  municipal  city,  the  fashionable  town  of  the  south-east  *  (Wright's 
Celt,  Roman,  and  Saxon,  p.  123),  where  'the  chief  lines  of  communication 
intersected  one  another '  (Merivale,  vi.  248 \  See  Turner,  Angl.  Sax. 
i.  197.     Its  site  is  S.W.  of  St.  Albans. 

*  Here  stands  the  vast  minster,  now  the  cathedral. 

2  TertuU.  de  Bapt.  16  ;  St.  Cyprian,  Ep.  73.  18,  19,  &c.  Comp.  Euseb. 
vi.  4. 

3  Although  Chester,  the  seat  of  the  twentieth  legion,  was  so  named,  as 
in  Bede,  ii.  2,  yet  in  this  passage  Caerleon-on-Usk,  or  Isca  Silurum,  the 
headquarters  of  the  second  legion,  is  meant  (see  Merivale,  Hist.  Rom.  vi. 
248).  So  in  Liber  Landavensis,  ed.  Rees,  p.  27,  as  to  these  martyrdoms 
at  'civitatem  Legionum  super  Huisc  dictam  ; '  and  Geoffrey  says  (vii.  4) 
that  churches  of  SS.  Aaron  and  Julius  existed  there.  Bede  says  that  when 
persecution  ceased,  a  church  was  built  on  tlie  spot  of  Al  ban's  martyrdom. 


British  Bishops  at  Aries,  9 

in  429  it  was  fully  believed  at  Vemlamium.  In  the  sixth  chap.  i. 
century  it  is  narrated  by  Gildas^  and  alluded  to  in  a  line 
of  Venantius  Fortunatus^,  quoted  by  Bede.  The  time  is 
disputed  :  Gildas  and  Bede  refer  it  to  the  last  great  persecu- 
tion which  began  in  303,  while  the  Saxon  Chronicle  dates 
it  in  283  :  if  the  former  date  is  correct,  the  difficulty  arises 
as  to  the  possibility  of  a  persecution  in  Britain  while 
Constantius,  whom  Eusebius  eulogizes  as  most  kindly 
disposed  towards  Christianity^  and  markedly  tolerant  of 
Christians,  held  authority  as  Caesar  over  the  island.  But, 
previous  to  the  abdication  of  Maximian  in  the  May  of  305, 
the  benevolent  prince  who  owned  the  superior  authority  of 
a  coarse  and  merciless  tyrant,  '  implacably '  hostile  '  to  the 
name  and  religion  of  the  Christians^,'  might  be  unable  to 
restrain  subordinate  local  persecutors:  and  on  the  w^hole 
we  may  say  with  Milman,  that '  there  seems  no  reason  to 
doubt '  the  historic  reality  of  the  British  Protomartyr  ^  nor, 
we  may  add,  of  those  other  Christian  sufferers  whose  names 
are  associated  with  his,  and  for  whom  Gildas  is  the  earliest 
authority^. 

The  restoration  of  peace  to  the  Christian  body  was  too  Council  (.t 
soon  followed  by  the  troubles  of  the  Donatist  schism,  which  ^^'^*''^- 
led  to  the  meeting  of  the  great  Council  of  Aries,  in  a.d.  314. 
Its  records   show,  among   the  bishops  present,  the  names 
of   three   from   Britain :    Eborius   of  York,  Restitutus   of 

^  Gild.  Hist.  8. 

^  In  his  poem  on  Virginity,  Miscell.  viii.  c.  6.  He  puts  Alban  after 
Vincent. 

^  Euseb.  H.  E.  viii.  13  ;  Vit.  C.  i.  16.  Sozomen,  i,  6,  says  that  under 
him  *  it  was  not  thought  unlawful  for  .  .  .  Britons  ...  to  profess  Chris- 
tianity.' Lactantius  says  that  he  permitted  Christian  churches  'to  be 
pulled  down,  but  preserved  unhurt  that  true  temple  of  God  which  exists 
in  men  ;*  Mort.  Pers.  15.  This  corrects  Eusebius'  assertion  that  under 
him  churches  were  safe,  but  appears  to  need  some  modification  as  to  men. 

*  Gibbon,  ii.  267.  Compare  Smith,  App.  4.  to  Bede,  that  Constantius 
could  not,  and  did  not,  prevent  all  persecution  in  Gaul  and  Spain  :  '  he 
dared  not  refuse  to  publish  the  edicts.' 

^  Lat.  Chr.  ii.  226.  That  the  number  of  the  martyrs  of  Britain  at  this 
time  has  been  exaggerated  (e.g.  Bede's  Marty rology  gives  888)  is  obvious. 

"  Martyrologists  also  name  a  St.  Augulus,  bishop,  in  Augusta,  i.  e. 
London  (in  Bede's  Martyrology,  Augustus)  :  see  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i. 
29.  Nothing  is  known  of  him.  Alb.  Butler  (Feb.  7)  thinks  that  he 
suffered  soon  after  Alban. 


lo  British  Bishops  at  Aries. 

London,  and  Adelphius  *  de  civitate  Colonia  Londinensium  \' 
together  with  Sacerdos,  a  presbyter,  and  ArminiuvS,  a 
deacon.  '  Eborius  of  Eboracuin  '  is  rather  suspicious  (as 
is  *  Sacerdos '),  but  the  name  may  be  some  British  name 
misread-.  But  what  was  the  word  which  has  been  cor- 
rupted into  '  Londinensium '  %  It  has  been  proposed  to  read 
'  Camulodunensium,'— the  men  of  that  typical  Roman  colony 
Avhich  has  given  its  name  to  Colchester, — ilte  Colonia  of 
the  fifth  '  iter,'  which  has  been  ranked  as  the  third  town 
in  Britain  during  the  Roman  period^.  But  two  other 
opinions  ^re  now  more  popular :  one  is,  that  the  original 
reading  was  *  lindensium*,'  and  then  Adelfius  would  appear 
as  bishop  of  the  '  Colony  of  Lindum '  or  Lincoln.  Another 
would  read  '  Legionensium  ^,'  and  place  his  see  in  *  the 
famous  city  of  Caerleon,  the  camp  of  the  Legion^,'  the  great 
stronghold  of  Roman  power  in  '  Britannia  Secunda,'  where 
even  now  the  amphitheatre  and  the  collection  of  Roman 
remains  render  the  little  village  on  the  bank  of  the 
Usk  one  of  the  most  impressive  scenes  in  South  Wales. 
For  this  theory  it  may  be  said  that  Caerleon,  the  traditional 

^  Mansi,  Cone.  ii.  476. 

2  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  7.  Ivor  is  an  old  British  name ;  see  Annal. 
Camb.  a.  501,  'Ebur  (al.  Ywor)  episcopus  pausat.'  Geoffrey  mentions  an 
Ivor  in  his  '  History,'  ix.  6;  see  too  Giraldus  on  'Ivor  the  Little'  (^Itin. 
Camb.  i.  6).  Pryce  gives  Efrog  as  the  Welsh  equivalent  to  Ebi/rius  (Brit. 
Ch.  p.  88).  But  see  alsoEaine,  Fast.  Ebor.  i.  9.  Adelfius  and  '  Hibernius  ' 
are  among  the  signataries  of  the  synodal  letter  to  Pope  Silvester.  Is 
Hibernius  another  form  of  Eborius  ? 

•'  York  and  London  being  firsl;  and  second :  Guest,  Orig.  Celt.  ii.  284. 
Yet  see  Cutts,  '  Colchester,*  p.  39  :  '  Colonia  was  never  .  .  .  even  the  per- 
manent headquarters  of  a  legion,'  &c. 

*  Bingham,  b.  ix.  c.  6.  s.  20 ;  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  6 ;  Routh,  Rell. 
Sac.  iv.  296 ;  Lappenberg,  Hist.  Eng.  (E.  Tr.)  i.  50  ;  Robertson,  i.  218. 
Compare  *  Lindocolina '  in  Bede,  ii.  16.  See  Freeman,  Engl.  Towns,  &c. 
p.  T92. 

*  Stillingfleet,  Orig.  Brit.  p.  78  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  7.  There  is  no 
good  evidence  for  any  Archbishopric  in  Wales  ;  Pryce,  p.  89. 

^  Merivale,  vi.  248.  Geoffrey's  imagination  endows  it,  in  Arthurian 
days,  with  royal  palaces,  '  ita  ut  aureis  tectorum  fastigiis  Romam  imi- 
taretur,'  vii.  4.  Somewhat  later,  Giraldus  wrote,  'Videas  hie  multa 
pristinae  nobilitatis  adhue  vestigia  et  palatia  immensa,  .  .  .  thermas 
insignes,  templorum  reliquias,  et  loea  theatralia  .  .  .  egregiis  muris  partim 
adhue  exstantlbus'  (fragments  of  them  are  still  extant)  *  omnia  clausa,' 
&c.  Itin.  Camb.  i.  e.  5  ^vol.  vi.  p.  55).  SeePalgrave,  Engl.  Comm.  p.  323  ; 
Lappenberg,  i.  52. 


Few  traces  of  British  Church.  ii 

liome  of  the  martyrs  Aaron  and  Julius,  and  the  traditional   chap.  r. 

seat  of  an  ancient  British  bishopric,  appears  more  naturally 

to   associate  itself  with  the  third  delegate  to  Aries  than 

a   town    within   a   short   distance    of    York,   and   in   the 

province  ^  whose  capital  was  London.     But  the  scribe  or 

the  copyist  would  hardly  have  turned  '  Legionensium  '  into 

'  Londinensium,'  whereas  '  Lindensium '  might  easily  be  thus 

misread  ;  and  the  objection  that  Caerleon  was  not  a  colony^ 

is  decisive.     The  choice,  then,  lies  between  Colchester  and 

Lincoln;  and  probabilities   appear  to   incline  towards  the 

latter. 

During  the  rest  of  the  '  Roman  period,'  the  Church  of  Roman- 
Britain  shows  like  a  valley  wrapt  in  mists,  across  which  church  • 

some  fitful  li£:hts  irrepfularly  Heam.     We  know  nothing^  of  little 

.,  .  ,^  .^  -^   f^. ,,       £  .,     .    ,  1  r^  „  known  of 

its  episcopal  succession,  very  little  or  its  internal  lite,  or  or  it. 

its  efforts  at  self-extension.  We  read  of  some  of  its  build- 
ings as  having  been  known  to  exist  at  Canterbury,  Caerleon, 
Verulam.,  and,  we  may  add,  on  one  most  interesting  spot, 
then  girdled  in  by  waters  and  known  as  Ynys-vitrin,  usually 
rendered  '  the  Glassy  Isle,'  or  Avallon  or  Avalon,  '  the  Isle 
of  Apples,'  our  present  Glastonbury,  where  the  tall  green 
peak  of  the  Tor  of  St.  Michael  looks  down  on  the  stately 
rains  of  the  great  abbey  which  succeeded  to  '  the  old  church  ' 
made  originally  of  twisted  wands,  the  earliest  sanctuary 
on  that  venerable  ground,  of  which  Christianity  has  held 
uninterrupted  possession*^.     Traces   of   some  ecclesiastical 

'  I.  e.  Flavia  Caesariensis.  Maxima  Caesariensis  stretched  from  the 
Humber  to  the  southern  wall,  that  of  Hadrian  ;  Valentia,  from  thence  to 
tlie  wall  of  Antoninus.  Britannia  Prima  included  all  south  of  Thames 
and  Severn  ;  Britannia  Secunda  was  our  Wales. 

-  Hiibner,  Inscr.  Brit.  Chr.,  praef.  p.  vii. 

^  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  37.  For  Glastonbury  or  Avalon  in  particular  see 
Freeman,  Norm.  Conq.  i.  439,  English  Towns  and  Districts,  p.  76  if.  He 
derives  its  English  name  from  '  the  family  of  Glaesting,'  and  suggests  that 
the  interpretation,  'glassy  isle,'  put  upon  * Ynysvitrin,'  may  have  been 
a  mere  play  on  words.  Setting  aside  mere  fables,  the  church  of 
Glastonbury  might  be  what  Malmesbury  calls  it,  '  the  oldest  church,  as 
far  as  he  knew,  in  England.'  But  its  '  great  temporal  position '  may  prob- 
ably date  from  601,  when  a  king  of  Dumnonia  (vvhich  'stretched  from 
Malmesbury  to  the  Land's  End')  'granted  the  land  called  Ynysvitrin 
to  the  old  church  which  was  situated  there,  at  the  request  of  Worgret 
the  abbot '  (Malmesb.  de  Antiq,  Glast.    Guest  identifies  this  royal  founder 


12  British  Churchy   Catholic, 

CHAP.  I.  Roman  work  have  been  discerned  here  and  there,  as  at 
Canterbury,  Lyniinge,  and  Brixworth  ;  but  amid  the  crowd 
of  monuments,  and  other  relics  of  Roman  dominion^, — 
among  which  occur  not  only  altars  to  Roman  gods,  properly 
so  called,  including  Rome  herself,  the  manes  of  the  dead, 
and  the  Genius  of  Fortune,  but  also  names  of  barbaric 
deities,  and  tokens  of  the  wide  diffusion  of  the  strangely 
fascinating  worship  oLMithras,-, — antiquarians  have  found 
but  scanty  memorials  of  Roman-British  Christianity, — the 
cross,  or  the '  Chi-Rho,'  here  and  there,  on  a  ring,  a  stone, 
a  vessel,  or  a  tesselated  pavement, — or  a  grave-stone, 
alluding  to  '  peace,'  or  '  rest,'  or  '  life',  or  recording  that  a 
*  Christian  man '  slept  below  -^  To  some  extent,  this  dis- 
appointing lack  of  evidence  may  be  accounted  for  by  the 
devastating  fury  of  Saxon  heathenism :  but  it  seems  im- 
possible to  doubt  that  the  Church  which  has  left  so  few 
visible  marks  of  its  presence  and  activity  was  not  strong 
in  numbers,  or  influence,  or  wealth*,  and  that  it  had  not,  in 
fact,  '  inherited  the  land.'  In  regard  to  its  relations  with 
the  Churches  of  Europe,  we  find  it  adhering  to  the  orthodox 
side  in  the  great  Arian  struggle :  not  only  does  Constantine, 
in  his  extant  letter,  include  the  Britons  among  those  who 
accepted  the  ruling  of  the  Nicene  Council  as  to  the  cal- 
culation of  Easter  ^,  but  St.  Athanasius  ranks  the  British 

with  a  king  named  Gwrgan  Varvtrwch,  Orig.  Celt,  ii,  270  :  see  Bonifae. 
Ep.  70,  the  letter  of  Wetbert  to  the  monks  of 'Glestingaburg.'  Freeman, 
p.  86). 

*  See  the  *  Collection  of  Roman  Inscriptions  and  Sculptures '  in  Horsley's 
Britannia  Romana,  p.  192  ff. 

*  £.  g.  a  large  altar  'Sancto  Mithrae'  at  Caerleon  ;  and  two  inscrip- 
tions '  Deo  Belatucadro,'  given  by  Horsley. 

'  See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  39,  162  ;  Hiibner,  nos.  i,  7,  31,  131  ; 
Allen's  Monumental  Hist,  of  Early  British  Church,  p.  29  ff.  He  says 
that  '  the  Christian  formula  Vivas  in  Deo  occurs  on  two  Roman  gold  rings 
.  .  .  found  at  Brancaster,  in  Norfolk,  in  1829,  and  at  Silchester  in  1786.' 
On  the  list  is  H.  and  S.,  and  on  inscriptions  itnplying  zeal  for  the 
'old'  gods,  see  F.  Haverfield  in  the  'Engl.  Hist.  Review'  of  July, 
1896.  A  small  basilican  building  discovered  at  Silchester  in  1892  is 
thought  to  be  a  small  church.  See  the  'Guardian'  of  Sept.  21, 
1892. 

*  Haddan,  Remains,  p.  332. 

'  Eus.  Vit.  Con.  iii.  19.  No  British  bishops  went  to  Nicaea.  Only  one 
bishop  went  from  Gaul. 


British  Churchy   Catholic,  13" 

bishops  with  prelates  of  various  provinces^  who  adhered  to   chap.  i. 
the  decision  of  the  Sardican  Council,  against  those  who  had 
libelled  his  character  by  way  of  striking  at  the  faith  which 
he  upheld.     Hilary  of  Poitiers,  in  358-9,  congratulated  his 
British  brethren  on  their  '  freedom  from  all  contagion  of 
the  detestable  heresy  ^ : '    and  in  the  next  summer   some  Council  of 
British  bishops  took   part  in  the  Council   of   Ariminum.  nunT^ 
Sulpicius    Severus^    expressly    tells    us    that   three    only 
from  Britain,  being   unable   to   pay  their  own  expenses, 
would  not  receive  contributions   from  other  prelates,  but 
accepted  an  allowance  from  Constantius,  '  thinking  it  more 
consistent   with   duty   to   burden   the   treasury   than   in- 
dividuals^.'    No  doubt,  the  British  delegates  compromised 
their  brethren  at  home  by  being  cajoled  or  harassed  into 
accepting  the  uncatholic  formulary  which  made  the  name 
of  Ariminum  a  by-word :  but,  like  the  great  mass  of  those 
who  then  showed  weakness,  they  appear  to  have  returned 
to  the  Nicene  position ;  for  in  363  Athanasius  could  reckon  British 
the  Britons  among  those  who  were  loyal  to  the  Catholic  ^^^y^ 
faith  ^.     It   is   evident,   therefore,   th^t   Gildas,   and   Bede 
following  him,  have  greatly  exaggerated  the  influence  of 
Arianism  in  Britain*^.      Eminent  doctors  of  unquestioned 

^  Ath.  Apol.  c.  Ari.  i.  Hist.  Ari.  28  (yet  see  Apol.  50).  It  has  often 
been  said  that  British  bishops  actually  sat  in  the  Sardican  Council.  But 
that  Council's  letter,  Apol.  c.  Ari.  36,  reciting  the  countries  there  and 
then  represented,  names  Spain  and  Gaul,  and  omits  Britain  :  and  Athan- 
asius himself  in  the  first  passage  speaks  of  '  more  than  300 '  bishops, 
whereas  he  reckons  the  bishops  present  at  Sardica  as  170 ;  Hist. 
Ari.  15. 

"^  *  Dilectissimis  et  beatissimis  patribus  et  coepiscopis  '  of  Germany  and 
of  Gaul,  *et  piovinciarum  Britanniarum  episcopis.'     De  Synodis. 

^  Sulp.  ii.  41.  See  Gibbon,  iv.  134.  He  thinks  that  the  British  Church 
might  have  thirty  or  foi  ty  bishops.     This  seems  an  over-estimate. 

*  Sulpicius  adds,  'I  have  often  heard  Gavidius  our  bishop  mention  this 
in  a  tone  of  censure.  But  I  should  regard  it  quite  otherwise ;  and 
I  praise  the  bishops  for  having  been  so  poor  as  to  have  nothing  of  their 
own,  and  for  accepting  supplies  from  no  others,  but  only  from  the 
treasury,  ubi  neminem  gravabant ;  .  .  .  ita  in  utrisque  egregium  exem- 
plum.*  The  words  in  a  preceding  sentence,  *  id  est  Aquitanis,  Gallis, 
ae  Britannis,*  which  imply  that  the  'three  '  were  only  a  minority  of  the 
British  delegates,  appear  to  be  a  gloss. 

'  Ath.  Ep,  ad  Jovian.  2. 

«  Gild.  Hist.  9  ;  Bede,  i.  8. 


14  St  Nmian. 

CHAP.  I.  oi-thodoxy,  in  the  period  following  the  Athanasian,  speak 
as  if  the  distant  islanders  were  one  in  faith  with  themselves. 
Chrysostom  says  that  *  even  the  British  isles ' — (observe  the 
plural) — 'have  felt  the  power  of  the  Word,  for  there  too 
churches  and  altars  have  been  erected  : '  there  too,  as  in  the 
extreme  East,  or  beside  the  Euxine,  or  in  the  South,  '  men 
may  be  heard  discussing  points  in  Scripture,  with  differing 
voices,  but  not  with  differing  belief  ^'  Jerome  is  not  less 
emphatic :  Britain,  he  affirms,  '  worships  the  same  Christ, 
observes  the  same  rule  of  truth/  with  other  Christian 
countries :  more  than  this,  the  enthusiasm  for  pilgrimages 
to  Palestine  had  touched  even  Britons,  as  well  as  'the 
swarms  of  the  East,'  and  it  seemed  opportune  to  remark 
that '  the  road  to  the  heavenly  hall  stood  open  from  Britain 
as  well  as  from  Jerusalem^.'  On  one  occasion  we  find 
that  a  discord  had  arisen  among  British  Christians,  the 
exact  nature  of  which  cannot  be  learned  from  the  rhetorical 
generalities  in  which  Victricius,  bishop  of  R-ouen,  tells  how, 
at  the  request  of  his  '  fellow-bishops '  in  Britain,  he  had 
gone  over  thither  to  restore  religious  peace ^.  Our  subject 
does  not  include  the  history  of  Christianity  in  North 
Britain :  but  w^e  hear  of  Calpurnius,  a  deacon  as  well  as 
a  '  decurio/  or  town-councillor,  resident  probably  at  or  neai- 
Dunbarton,  whose  father  Potitus  was  a  presbyter,  and 
whose  son  Succat  became  the  great  St.  Patrick*:  nor  can 
we  forget  how  the  northern  extremity  of  England  must 
St-Ninian.  have  profited  by  the  homeward  journey  of  Ninian,  a  native 
of  the  Cumbrian  district^,  who,  having  studied  at  Rome, 
and  received  episcopal  consecration  from  Pope  Siricius, 
returned  to  Britain^,  established  a  missionary  bishopric  on 

^  Clirys.  Quod  Chr.  sit  Deus,  12  ;  Horn,  in  Princip.  Act.  3.  i. 

2  Jerome,  Ep.  146.  1  ;  Ep.  46.  10 ;  Ep.  58.  3.  The  last  of  these 
three  sentences  was  written  about  395.  Cp.  Prudentius,  Peristeph. 
xiii.  103. 

3  Victric.  de  Laude  Sanctomm,  i  (GaUand.  Bibl.  Patr.  vii.  228  .  This 
journey  would  be  after  a.  d.  390. 

*  See  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  iv.  203.  On  the  ascertained  facts  about  Patrick 
I  may  refer  to  '  The  Roman  See  in  the  Early  Church,'  &c.,  p.  370  ff. 

5  SeeBede,  iii.  4  :  A.-S.  Chron.  a.  565  ;  Bp.  Forbes,  Kalendars  of  Scottish 
Saints,  p.  422,  and  Lives  of  SS.  Ninian  and  Kentigern,  p.  257. 

*  On  his  way  home  he  became  acquainted  with,  and  was  profoundly 


Pelagianism  in  Britain.  15 

a  promontory  of  Wigtownshire,  and  built  a  church,  not,  as  •  "^«-  « 
was  usual  among  Britons,  of  wood,  but,  in  the  Roman 
fashion,  of  stone, — on  account  of  which,  as  Bede  tells  us, 
the  place  was  called  the  White  House,  'Candida  Casa^' 
otherwise  Whithem, — where  now  a  ruined  cathedral,  crown- 
ing a  wooded  mound,  represents  what  was  once  emphatically 
named  '  the  Great  Monastery 2,'  and  known  as  a  centre  of 
religious  light  and  strength  for  all  who  dwelt  along  the 
Solway  and  between  the  two  Roman  '  walls,'  and  even  for 
those  'Southern  Picts^'  whose  proper  district  extended 
from  the  Forth  to  the  great  range  of  hills  called  the 
Mounth,  which  crosses  our  present  Scotland  between  Ben 
Nevis  and  Stonehaven.  So  it  was  that  in  after-ages 
St.  Ninian  was  commemorated  as  the  instrument  by 
whom  the  '  Picts  and  Britons '  had  been  *  converted  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  faith  ^.' 

Those  early  years  of  the  fifth  century,  during  which 
Ninian  was  in  his  prime  of  work  ^^  witnessed  the  origin  of 
a  momentous  controversy  which  went  far  to  impair,  in  the 
eyes  of  zealous  continental  theologians,  the  reputation  of 
the  British  Church  for  simple-hearted  orthodoxy.  When  Pelagiai 
Pelagius  became  obnoxious  by  speculations  offensive  to  '''"^" 
Christian  piety,  he  was  generally  known  as  '  the  Briton  ^,' 

impressed  by,  the  great  missionary  bishop  of  Gaul,  St.  Martin  of  Tours, — 
and  in  his  memory  the  *  white'  church  was  hallowed  ;  Bede,  1.  c. 

'  Bede,  iii.  4.  Comp.  v.  21  ;  Hist.  Abb.  5.  Whithern,  however,  was 
perhaps  the  Leucopibia  (probably  Leukoikid'a)  of  Ptolemy.  *  Hwit 
sern '  =  'white  cell,'  Guest,  Orig.  Celt.  ii.  302.  It  was  also  called  Futerna 
and  Eosnat.  On  the  sculptures  at  Kirkmadrine  in  Wigtownshire— two 
stones  with  the  Christian  monogram,  one  having  also  the  names  of  '■  the 
priests  Viventius  and  Mavorius  '  (or  '  Majorius  * ;,  the  other  of  '■  Florentius ' 
— see  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  51  ;  Hiibner,  no.  205  ;  Bishop  Dowden, 
Celtic  Church  in  Scotland,  p.  16.  They  were  probably  priests  under 
Ninian.  The  widespread  reverence  for  Ninian  (popularly  called  Ringan") 
extended  to  Shetland. 

^  Bp.  Forbes,  Lives,  &c.,  pp.  xlii,  292  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  120. 

•^  Bede,  iii.  4.  See  Skene,  Celtic  Scotl.  i.  230.  Haddan  and  Stubbs, 
ii.  105  ;  Arbuthnott  Missal,  p.  369. 

*  Collect  in  an  office  for  his  festival.  So  in  a  hymn  :  '  Dat  vitam  pastor 
incolis  Pictis  junctis  Britonibus.' 

^  Legend  dated  his  death  on  Sept.  16,  432.  'Many  saints'  were 
believed  to  rest  beside  him  :   Bede,  iii.  4. 

«  Augustine,  Ep.   186.    i.     So  Bede   here  calls   him,   i.    10,  and  cites 


i6  Pelagtantsm  in  Britain, 

HAP.  I.  and  was,  indeed,  characterized  by  Jerome,  in  his  coarse 
way,  as  '  that  big  dog  of  Albion  ^'  It  is  right  to  remember 
that  he  had,  in  his  own  way,  *  a  zeal  for  God/  a  grave 
indignation  against  the  inertness  of  many  professing 
Christians,  who  pleaded  their  weakness  as  an  excuse  for 
not  striving  after  sanctity  ^.  But  he  went  astray  through 
an  exaggeration  of  human  capacities  for  moral  attainment^; 
he  over-rated  the  power  of  the  will,  and  denied  the  necessity 
of  internal  grace ;  and  he  grounded  this  denial  on  the 
rejection  of  that  view  of  the  Fall,  as  a  source  of  inherited 
corruption  and  debasement,  which  is  technically  called  the 
doctrine  of  'original  sin*.'  He  had  left  Britain  in  early 
life,  and  does  not  seem  to  have  returned;  but  a  bishop, 
Severianus,  who  adopted  his  opinions,  had  a  son  named 
Agricola  ^,  who  devoted  himself  with  passionate  ardour  to 
the  work  of  spreading  the  prescribed  theory  in  the  country 
of  its  author,  so  that,  in  Prospers  words,  ' enemies  of  grace 
took  possession  of  the  heresiarch's  native  soil^.'  The 
British   clergy   were   generally   faithful   to    the    received 

Prosper's  lines,   alluding  to  him  as  nourished  by   *  aequorei   Britanni ' 
(in  one  of  Prosper's  Epigrams).     Compare  his  De  Ingratis,  i.  13  : — 
'  Dogma  quod  antiqui  satiatum  felle  draconis 
Pestifero  vomuit  coluber  sermone  Britannus.' 
Oomp.  Prosf>er,  Chron.  a.d.   416,   '  Pelagius  Brito;'   Orosius,  Apol.    12, 
'  Britannieus  noster  ; '  and  Marius  Mercator,  p.  2,  'a  Briton.'    It  is  a  mere 
guess  that  Pelagius  is  '  Morgan  '  Grecized. 

^  In  Jerem.  1.  3.  praef.  (a.d.  4I9\  The  devil,  he  says,  *  latrat  per  Albinum 
(a  correction  from  "  Alpinum")  canem  grandem  et  corpulentum,  et  qui 
calcibus  magis  possit  saevire  quam  dentibus.'  The  next  sentence,  '  Habet 
enim  progeniem  Scoticae  gentis,  de  Britannorum  vicinia,'  naturally 
suggests  that  Jerome  supposed  Pelagius,  although  popularly  called  a 
Briton,  or  native  of  '  Albion,'  to  be  in  fact  an  Irishman.  Comp.  Jerome, 
prolog,  in  .Terem.  :  *  stolidissimus,  et  Scotorum  puUibus  praegravatus.'  And 
see  Tillemont,  xiii.  562.  Others  suppose  Jerome  to  refer  to  Coelestius  as 
Irish,  e.  g.  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  Councils,  ii.  290.  There  was  a  con- 
siderable Gaelic  or  Irish  element  in  South  Wales  until  the  *  Brythonic ' 
invasion  under  Cunedda  in  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century. 
N  2  See  St.  Augustine,  de  Dono  Persev.  s.  53.     CJ).  the  writer's  *  Lessons 

from  Lives  of  Three  Great  Fathers,'  p.  165. 

^  See  Guizot,   Civil,   in   France,   lect.  5  ;  Mozley  on  Doctrine  of  Pre- 
destination, pp.  58  64,  102  ;  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  iv.  283. 

*  See   the  writer's   Introd.  to   'Select  Anti- Pelagian  Treatises  of  St. 
Augustine,'  pp.  vii-xii. 

^  Bede,  i.  17. 

*  C.  Collatorem,  s.  58. 


Britons  appeal  to  Gallic  Church.  17 

doctrines,  although  a  severe  interpretation  might  find  a  chai>.  r. 
Pelagian  leaven  in  a  practical  treatise  written  by  a  British 
prelate  of  this  period,  named  Fastidius  ^.  But  some  lay- 
men of  wealth  and  importance  were  attracted  by  a  system 
which  tended  to  resolve  Christianity  into  a  philosophy  2, 
and  to  explain  away  those  mysterious  announcements,  as 
to  transmitted  sinfulness  and  the  absolute  need  of  grace, 
which  demanded  the  humiliation  of  the  soul.  Britain,  it 
seems,  had  no  divines  competent  to  resist  it ;  and  an  appeal 
was  therefore  made  to  the  Church,  one  might  say  the 
mother-Church,  in  Gaul, — the  Church  of  Hilary  and  of 
Martin, — which  was  both  able  and  ready  to  assist  out 
of  its  abundance  the  theological  poverty  of  Britain.  Two  Visit  of 
Gallic  bishops  were  commissioned  to  visit  the  island :  but  ^^*  ^*^*'' , 

^^  man  and 

there  is  a  discrepancy  between  our  authorities  as  to  the  Lupus, 
circumstances  of  their  appointment.  According  to  Con- 
stantius  of  Lyons -^  who  wrote  some  sixty  years  later, 
with  full  access  to  local  information,  and  whose  account 
is  copied  by  Bede,  the  prelates,  Germanus  of  Auxerre  and 
Lupus  of  Troyes,  were  sent  over  by  '  a  numerous  synod  * ' 
to '  uphold  in  Britain  the  belief  in  Divine  grace.'  According 
to  Prosper  of  Aquitaine,  the  admiring  defender  of  St. 
Augustine,  Celestine  bishop  of  Rome  is  said  to  have  sent 

^  'Fastidius,  Britannorum  episcopus  ; '  Gennadius  de  Vir.  Illustr.  56. 
See  Galland.  Bibl.  Patr.  ix.  p.  xxx.  In  the  nth  chapter  of  his  *De  Vita 
Christiana '  Fastidius  approves  of  such  a  prayer  as  was  made  a  matter  of 
complaint  against  Pelagius  ('Thou  knowest,  Lord,  that  these  hands 
which  I  lift  up  are  holy,'  &c.  ;  comp.  Jerome,  Dial.  c.  Pelag.  iii.  14).  See 
Tillemont,  Mem.  xv.  17,  who  adds  that  his  language  on  the  effect  of  the 
Fall  is  inadequate:  it  is,  'omnes  suo  damnantur  exempto  ; '  c.  13. 
Stillingfleet  defends  him,  Orig.  Brit.  p.  200. 

"^  Michelet,  Hist.  Fr.  bk.  i.  c.  3.  That,  at  the  same  time,  Pelagianism 
was  'raised  on  a  basis  philosophically'  as  well  as  '  religiously  false,'  see 
Mozley,  Aug.  Doctr.  Predest.  pp.  102-104. 

'  See  Constantius'  Vit.  S.  Germ.,  c.  19,  in  Surius,  de  Probatis  Sanctorum 
Historiis,  vol.  iv.  p.  416  ;  Life  of  St.  German  (in  Lives  of  English  Saints), 
p,  122.  Constantius  dedicates  this  'Life'  to  Patiens,  bishop  of  Lyons, 
who  had  often  urged  him  to  write  it.  Bede  copies  largely  from  this  part 
of  it,  making  some  verbal  alterations,  as  '  magna '  for  '  numerosa  synodus,* 
occasionally  adding,  but  usually  abbreviating  by  the  omission  of  some 
mere  verbiage,  and  frequently  smoothing  out  the  Latin. 

*  That  the  Council  was  held  at  Troyes,  see  Life  of  St.  German, 
p.  12a. 

C 


i8  Mission  of  German  and  Lupus. 

German  '  as  his  representative  ^/  by  which  means  Celestine 
*  took  pains  to  keep  the  Roman  island  Catholic  ^.'  Prosper 
has  the  advantage  over  Constantius  in  being  a  contemporary 
writer^ ;  and  he  visited  Rome  in  431  to  lodge  a  complaint 
before  this  Pope  *.  The  two  statements  have  been  har- 
monized by  supposing  that  Celestine  recommended  German 
to  the  Council  ^ ;  or  that  after  the  Council  had  chosen  its 
two  envoys,  German  also  '  received  the  Pope's  sanction '  for 
his  journey  ^ ;  or  else,  that  Constantius'  statement  is  true 
only  of  Lupus,  and  that  German's  commission  was  simply 
from  Rome"^.  But  who  were  German  and  Lupus?  The 
former  was  by  much  the  greater  personage  of  the  two. 
Bede's  statement  that  the  Pelagian  difficulty  in  Britain 
was  'a  few  years  prior  to  the  coming  of  the  Saxons,' 
which  he  dates  about  446-7,  must  be  loosely  interpreted 
if  he  is  understood  as  accepting  the  chronology  of  Prosper, 

'  Prosp.  Chron.  Integr,  par.  2,  '  Florentio  et  Dionysio  Coss.  (i.  e.  429)  : 

Ad  actionem  Palladii  diaconi,  papa  Coelestinus  Germanum vice 

sua  mittit.'     (Migne,  Patr.  Lat.  ii.  594.) 

^  Prosp.  c.  Collat.  c.  21,  s.  58  :  '■  Nee  vero  segniore  cura  ab  hoc  eodem 
morbo  Britannias  liberavit,  quando  quosdam  inimicos  gratiae  solum 
suae  originis  occupantes  etiam  ab  illo  secret©  exclusit  Oceani,  et  ordinate 
Scotis  episcopo  (i.  e.  Palladius),  dum  Romanam  insulam  studet  servare 
catholicam,  fecit  etiam  barbaram  Christianam.'  Palladius  was  sent 
in  431  as  bishop  to  the  'Scots  (Irish)  who  believed  in  Christ'  (Prosp. 
Chron.),  the  scattered  believers  among  the  Irish  ;  see  Todd's  St.  Patrick, 
p.  284.  Whether  he  afterwards  visited  North  Britain  is  at  least  very- 
doubtful  ;  Skene  takes  the  negative  view,  Celtic  Scotl.  ii.  27.  Bishop 
Dowden  thinks  that  the  Scottish  tradition  may  have  some  truth  in  it  ; 
Celt.  Ch.  in  Sc.  p.  41.     Cp.  Stephen,  Hist.  Sc.  Ch.  i.  23. 

2  He  wrote  in  support  of  St.  Augustine  about  428.  The  Carmen  de 
Ingratis  is  dated  about  429-430,  the  Contra  Collatorem  after  432  ;  the 
Chronicle  comes  down  to  455. 

*  His  complaint  was  against  Gallic  '  Semi-Pelagians.'  See  Tillemont, 
xvi.  14,  and  my  Introd.  to  Anti-Pelagian  Treat,  p.  Iv. 

*  Life  of  St.  German,  p.  122  :  cp.  Fleury,  b.  25.  c.  15. 
^  Tillemont,  xv.  15  ;  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  ii.  655. 

'  Lingard,  Anglo.-Sax.  Ch.  i.  8.  To  this  Bishop  Dowden  inclines, 
p.  210  ;  but  it  is  hardly  probable.  Constantius  jnust  have  had  reason  for 
connecting  the  mission  of  his  hero  with  the  national  episcopate  :  and 
Prosper  on  his  side  must  have  known  whether  or  no  Celestine  took  action 
in  the  matter ;  although,  from  his  point  of  view,  he  may  have  over-estimated 
such  action.  Probably  the  truth  lies  in  a  combination  of  both  accounts. 
Celestine  may  have  expressed  an  approval  of  the  selection  of  German,  or 
may  have  given  him  a  special  commission  ;  Tillemont,  xv.  15.  The  Bene- 
dictine Life  of  Gregory  the  Great  simply  follows  Constantius,  bk.  iii.  4.  2. 


Mission  of  German  and  Lupus,  19 

from  whom  he  has  evidently  taken  his  account  of  chap.  i. 
Agricola's  propaganda,  and  who  dates  the  mission  in 
429,  when  German  had  then  been  eleven  years  bishop 
of  his  native  city.  He  had  seen  much  of  the  world  ^ ;  had 
studied  at  Rome,  not  for  the  priesthood,  but  for  the  bar ; 
had  held  the  high  place  of  '  duke  '  of  a  wide  district  ^  ;  and 
had  been  suddenly,  and  as  it  were  forcibly,  ordained  a  cleric 
by  Amator  bishop  of  Auxerre  ^,  and  soon  afterwards  suc- 
ceeded him  at  his  death,  A.  D.  418.  He  had  forthwith 
adopted,  with  all  his  heart  and  without  reserve,  the  strictest 
standard  of  episcopal  conduct*.  Lupus  was  a  few  years 
younger, — a  friend  of  Sidonius  Apollinaris,  who  addresses 
him  in  a  letter  ^  as  '  bishop  of  bishops ' :  two  letters  of  his 
are  preserved  ^. 

The  Gallic  prelates  landed   in   Britain  after  a  stormy  Discomii- 
voyage,  the  perils  of  which,  says  Constantius,  were  averted  p^^a^^^ians. 
by  the  prayers  of  German  '^.     '  They  preached  in  churches, 
and  even  in  streets  and  fields  and  in  the  open  country  ^,'  to 

^  Constantius,  i.  i.  He  attended  the  Gallic  schools  before  he  went  to 
Rome.     On  these  schools  cp.  Jerome,  Ep.  125.  6 ;  Bede,  iii.  18. 

2  Armorica  and  Nervia,  1.  e.  the  first  and  second  Aquitania,  the  Seno- 
nensis,  the  first  and  second  Lugdunensis.  He  retained  to  the  last  his 
*  dignity  of  countenance '  ;  Constant,  ii.  10. 

2  See  the  scene  described  in  the  English  Life  of  St.  German,  p.  37,  from 
Constantius,  i.  4. 

*  Tillemont,  xv.  13,  from  Constant,  i.  8-10.  Austerities  did  not  make 
German  hard  :  see  the  beautiful  anecdote  in  Constantius,  ii.  9,  that  when 
he  was  seventy,  on  his  journey  across  the  Alps,  he  fell  in  with  an  old 
lame  labourer,  on  the  edge  of  a  torrent  crossed  by  slippery  stones,  and 
carried  over  first  the  man's  burden,  and  then  the  man  himself.  Hereric, 
who  wrote  a  metrical  biography  of  German  in  the  ninth  century,  after 
enumerating  various  virtues  of  his,  adds,  '  Quodque  est  praecipuum,  dilectio 
plurimafratrum/     (In  Act.  SS.,  July  31.) 

5  Sidon.  Ep.  vi.  i.  The  letter  accumulates  expressions  of  reverence. 
In  another,  Ep.  vi.  4,  he  speaks  to  Lupus  as  '  apostolatui  tuo.' 

^  Sirmond.  i.  573  ;  Galland.  Bibl.  ix.  516  ;  Migne,  Patr.  Lat.  Iviii.  63. 
In  one  of  these  letters  he  says  to  Sidonius,  '  Gaudeo  exui,  postquam 
ecclesiam  induisti.*     He  lived  till  479. 

^  Constantius,  i.  22  ;  Bede,  i.  17.  The  incident  is  also  referred  to  by 
Adamnan,  Vit.  Col.  ii.  34.  Constantius,  however,  makes  German  pour 
oil  on  the  waves  :  Bede  omits  *  oleo/  and  turns  '  levi  aspergine  '  into  '  levi 
aquae  spargine.'  Dr.  Todd  thinks  it  not  unlikely  that  German  took  with 
him  Palladius  as  his  archdeacon  (St.  Patrick,  p.  318}. 

^  '  Per  trivia,  per  rura,  per  devia  ; '  Constant,  i.  23.  Bede  omits  *  per 
devia.* 

0  2 


20 


The  Debate  at  Verulam, 


tlie  great  encouragement  of  the  faithful:  their  teaching 
was  generally  accepted  ^ :  at  last,  however,  the  Pelagians, 
who  had  previously  avoided  a  debate,  took  the  resolution 
to  confront  the  foreign  bishops-,  apparently  at  Verulam. 
'  They  came  forward  in  all  the  pride  of  wealth,  and  richly 
attired,'  amid  a  circle  of  dependants  or  disciples  :  a  multitude 
of  men,  with  women  and  children,  assembled  to  hear  the 
discussion.  '  On  one  side,'  says  Constantius,  '  was  Divine 
authority,  on  the  other  was  human  assurance.'  '  On  one 
side,*  Bede  adds,  ^was  piety,  on  the  other  pride  ^.'  The 
Pelagians  spoke  first,  with  that  fluency  ^  which  seems  often 
to  have  distinguished  the  advocates  of  their  system.  Then 
the  bishops  replied,  with  arguments  from  '  the  Apostles 
and  Evangelists  ^'  adding  their  own  comments,  adducing 
authoiities  in  support  of  '  weighty  propositions,'  and  urging 
objections  against  the  whole  Pelagian  theory.  The  ad- 
versaries, we  are  told,  were  reduced  to  silence :  the  people 
exulted  in  their  defeat^.  Then  follows  an  account  of 
a  blind  girl  who  recovered  her  sight  by  aid  of  German's 
prayers^,  and  after  the  application  of  a  casket  of  relics 
which  he  always  wore  suspended  from  his  neck^:  after 
which  Bede  tells  us,  still  following  his  Gallic  authority, 
that  the  bishops  visited  the  tomb  of  St.  Alban,  over  which, 
as  he  had  already  said,  'a  church  of  admirable  workmanship 
had  been  reared '  after  the  close  of  the  persecution.  German 
took  away  with  him  a  mass  of  the  earth,  which  was  imagined 

^  '  Itaque  regionis  universitas  in  eorum  sententiam  prompta  transierat ; ' 
Const.,  Bede.  This  implies  that  many  had,  till  then,  inclined  to  Pela- 
gianism, 

'  'Diuturna  meditatione  concepta  ;'  Const.,  Bede. 

^  Bede's  antithesis,  '  inde  Pelagius  auctor,  hinc  Christus,'  is  adopted 
from  Constantius. 

*  'Sola  nuditate  verborum  diu  inaniter;'  Bede.  Comp.  S.  Aug.  e. 
Julianum,  ii.  i6,  '  tanta  loquacitate,'  and  iv.  38. 

'  Probably  Ps.  li.  5  ;  Rom.  v.  12  flf.  ;  i  Cor.  iv.  7,  xv.  21  ;  Eph.  ii.  3,  8  ; 
Phil.  ii.  13  ;  i  John  i.  8,  &c. 

*  It  is  added  that  the  people  could  hardly  keep  their  hands  off  them. 

''  At  first  the  bishops  challenged  the  Pelagians  to  '  cure  her ' ;  but 
they  'joined  the  parents  in  praying  that  the  bishops  would  do  so.' 

«  Constant,  i.  24,  comp.  ib.  10.  See  Greg.  Turon.  H.  Fr.  viii.  15, — dust 
from  St.  Martin's  grave,  in  a  casket,  hung  round  the  neck  of  Wulfilac. 
Gregory  the  Great  sent  to  a  Gallic  '  patrician '  a  small  cross  made  from 
*  St.  Peter's  chains,'  to  be  worn  round  the  neck  ;  Ep.  iii.  33. 


The  'Alleluia   Victory'  21 

still  to  bear  traces  of  the  blood  of  the  martyr  ^.     Passing    chap.  i. 
by  another  story  of  German's  preservation  from  fire  when 
lame  through  an  accident,  we  come  to  the  grand  tale  of 
the  Alleluia  Victory  ^.     A  combination  of  Picts  and  Saxons  The 

•"- ,    Alleluia 

menaced  the  British  :  German  and  Lupus  encouraged  them  victory. 
to  resistance,  joined  them  in  their  march,  and  in  the  Lent 
of  430  induced  the  majority,  who  were  still  heathens, — the 
British  clergy  having  made  no  impression  upon  them  ^, — to 
accept  daily  instructions,  and  to  ask  for  baptism.  On 
Easter  Eve  the  baptisms  were  administered  *,  the  great 
"fesHval  was  celebrated,  in  a  '  church '  formed  out  of  boughs 
of  trees :  the  British  '  host '  then  advanced,  the  greater 
part  of  it  fresh  '  from  the  laver,'  and  under  the  generalship 
of  the  sometime  '  duke  of  Armorica,'  who  showed  his  ability 
in  the  disposal  of  his  inferior  forces.  He  drew  them  up, 
as  if  in  ambush,  under  the  rocks  of  a  narrow  glen,  which 
he  had  ascertained  to  lie  full  in  the  path  of  the  enemy : 
as  the  first  ranks  of  the  heathen  drew  near,  expecting 
an  easy  triumph,  German  bade  the  Britons  repeat  after 
him  the  one  sacred,  joyous  word  which  they  had  so  lately 
uttered  in  their  Paschal  solemnities  ^.  Three  times  he  and 
Lupus  intoned  it,  '  Alleluia,  Alleluia,  Alleluia ! '  Their 
followers,  with  '  one  voice,'  made  the  sound  echo  through 

'  This  is  from  Constant,  i.  25,  and  it  is  the  first  known  instance  of  any 
acquaintance  with  the  story  of  St.  Alban.  Compare,  as  to  the  virtue 
ascribed  to  such  '  dust/  Bede,  iii.  10, 1 1.  German  built  a  church  at  Auxerre, 
and  there  deposited  the  dust.  Observe  the  strange  'conceit,*  that  ^a 
martyr's  slaughter  stills  keeps  red  when  the  persecutor  is  pale  *  (in  death '. 

^  Constant,  i.  28 ;  Bede,  i.  20 ;  and  see  Chron.  a.  459.  The  story  is 
not  given  in  the  original  text  of  Nennius.  Bede's  silence  about  Patrick 
is  less  strange  than  that  of  Gildas  about  German,  on  which  see  Life  of 
St.  German,  p.  159.  Possibly  he  alludes  to  the  *  victory '  in  Hist.  18,  on 
a  British  victory  obtained  by  trusting  in  God  ;  but  this  he  dates  after 
A.D.  446, 

^  Pearson,  in  his  Early  and  Middle  Ages  of  Engl.,  p.  46,  adds  that  there 
is  some  evidence  for  a  revival  of  British  Paganism  in  the  fifth  centuiy. 

*  See  the  form  in  Forbes's  Gallican  Liturgies,  p.  191.  The  words  at  the 
administration  were,  'Baptizo  t^  credentem  in  nomine  Patris,  &c.,  ut 
habeas  vitam  aeternam  in  saecula  saeculorum.' 

*  See  St.  Augustine's  Easter  sermons  on  Alleluia,  255,  256.  '  Et 
ipsum  Alleluia  quotidie  dicimus,  et  quotidie  delectamur  ...  Si  rorcm 
sic  amatis,  fontem  ipsum  quomodo  amabitis  !  .  .  .  O  felix  Alleluia  in 
coelo  ! '   See  Neale,  Essays  on  Liturgiology,  p.  65. 


22 


Second  Visit  of  German  to  Britain, 


CHAP.  I. 


Second 
visit  of 
German 
with 
Sevems. 


the  valley :  it  rang  from  cliff  to  cliff,  it  struck  the  invaders 
with  panic, — they  fled  as  if  the  very  skies  were  crashing 
over  them,  and  many  leapt  headlong  into  the  river  which 
intercepted  their  retreat:  the  Britons,  successful  without 
*  striking  a  blow,'  exulted  in  a  '  victory  won  by  faith  and 
clear  of  bloodshed^.'  The  scene  of  this  flight  is  laid  by 
Welsh  tradition  at  Maes-Garmon,  '  German's  Field,'  a  mile 
from  Mold,  in  Flintshire  ^.  He  and  Lupus  returned  home, 
after  the  island,  as  Constantius  expresses  it,  had  thus  been 
freed  from  '  foes  spiritual  and  corporeal.'  A  second  journey 
of  German  to  Britain,  in  order  to  complete  the  overthrow 
of  heresy,  is  referred  to  A.  D.  447  :  he  was  attended,  this 
time,  by  a  disciple  of  Lupus,  Severus  bishop  of  Treves^. 
A  few,  it  was  found,  had  relapsed  into  Pelagianism :  they 
were  reclaimed,  and  the  false  teachers  expelled  from  Britain, 
but  settled  in  places  on  the  continent  where  they  might 
unlearn  their  misbelief  ^.  A  miracle,  as  usual,  is  recorded 
in  connexion  with  this  visit;  from  that  time  forth,  says 
a  later  writer,  the  Britons  never  harboured  any  heresy^; 
and  German's  name  continued  to  be  held  in  honour  among 
the  people  whom  he  had  instructed  ^,  and   was   attached 

^  It  has  been  thought  that  the  words  of  Gregory  the  Great,  'Behold, 
the  tongue  of  Britain  .  .  .  has  long  ago  begun  to  resound  the  Hebrew 
Alleluia  in  the  praises  of  God,'  Moral,  in  Job  xxvii.  21,  may  refer  to  this 
event  :  so  Usher,  Antiq.  p.  179,  who  remarks  that  this  work  was  finished 
before  the  mission  of  Augustine.  Bede,  ii.  2,  and  Paul.  Diac.  refer  them  to 
the  conversion  of  Kent ;  and  they  may  have  been  added  by  Gregory  in 
a  revision  of  the  '  Morals.'     But  would  he  have  said  '  jamdudum '  ? 

^  Lingard,  Anglo-Sax.  Ch.  i.  11,  objects  that  Saxons  would  not  be  likely 
to  penetrate  into  North  Wales.  But  the  description  of  the  scenery  points 
to  some  such  scenery  as  that  of  Wales  or  Derbyshire.  The  river  near 
Maesgarmon  is  the  Alyn.  The  next  parish  to  Mold  is  Llan-arwon  ;  Rees, 
Welsh  Saints,  p.  125. 

3  Constantius,  ii.  2  ;  Bede,  i.  21  ;  *  Severo,  totius  sanctitatis  viro.' 

*  '  That  the  country  might  get  quit  of  them,  and  they  of  their  errors,' — 
so  we  might  render  the  words  of  Constantius. 

5  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  Descr.  Camb.  i.  18. 

^  See  Bp.  Jones  and  Freeman,  Hist,  of  St.  David's,  p.  257.  Nennius' 
History  has  various  stories  about  German's  proceedings,  e.g.  his  attempt 
to  convert  a  wicked  king  of  Powys,  31  ;  his  intercessions  for  the  guilty 
Vortigern,  50,  &c.  Of  his  anti-Pelagian  activities  it  only  says  that  he 
came  to  preach,  and  '  multi  per  eum  salvi  facti  sunt  :  increduli  perierunt ;' 
c.  30.  Some  eminent  Welsh  bishops  are  erroneously  described  as  his 
disciples. 


The  Saxon  Invasion,  23 

to  various  places  in  Wales  and  Cornwall  ^  It  is  well  to  <^«-*^i*'  ^ 
repeat  the  summary  of  his  character,  as  contained  in  the 
Liturgy  of  his  native  Church  :  the  '  Missa  Sancti  Germani ' 
for  July  31, — the  day  on  which,  as  Bede  expresses  it,  he 
'  migrated  to  Christ '  in  448, — after  mentioning  his  apostolic 
activity  as  extending  to  Britain,  affirmed  that '  he  so  began 
as  to  increase,  and  so  contended  as  to  conquer  ^.' 

We  have  heard  of  his  confronting  a  combination  of  Picts  Saxon 
with  Saxons.  That  name,  for.  ages  so  hateful  to  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  British  race,  had  been  a  sound  of  terror 
along  the  island  coast  even  in  the  third  century^.  Part 
of  that  coast,  from  the  Wash  to  Southampton,  had  been 
known  as  '  the  Saxon  Shore  * ' :  Claudian  had  depicted  '  the 
Saxon '  as  wafted  by  winds  towards  Britain,  and  sung  of 
a  defeat  of  Saxons  in  distant  Orkney  ^ :   but  after  many 

"■  Life  of  St.  German,  p.  i.  Several  ecclesiastical  colleges  in  Wales  were 
said  to  have  been  founded  by  him  ;  and  although  this  may  be  legendary 
(Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  21),  he  vv^as  not  unlikely  to  'advise  the  estab- 
lishment of  such  institutions '  as  might  guard  the  British  Church 
against  heresy  in  the  future  ;  Pryce,  Anc.  Br.  Ch.  p.  134.  A  *  Missa 
S.  Germani,'  cited  in  Bp,  Forbes's  Pref.  to  the  Arbuthnott  Missal,  p.  lii, 
and  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  696,  affirms  in  its  Praefatio  that  German, 
*  sent  by  Saint  Gregory,  shone  forth  as  a  lantern  and  pillar  to  Cornwall, 
and  bloomed  like  roses  and  lilies  in  the  meadow  of  the  church  of  Aledh  * 
( =  St.  German's).  It  is  possible  that  in  one  or  other  of  his  visits  he  did 
more  for  the  British  Church  than  had  any  interest  for  his  Gallic  bio- 
grapher. Giraldus  traces  to  his  influence  several  Welsh  customs,  e.  g. 
giving  to  the  poor  the  first  corner  of  every  loaf,  sitting  by  threes  at 
dinner,  asking  the  blessing  of  any  religious  man;  Descr.  Camb.  1.  18. 
The  legend  of  a  Germanus,  bishop  of  Man,  has  grown  out  of  the  dedication 
of  its  cathedral  to  St.  German  ;  Lanigan,  Eccl.  Hist.  Irel.  i.  306.  Man 
doubtless  derived  its  Christianity  from  Ireland.  The  similar  dedication 
of  Selby  Abbey  was  due  to  the  legend  of  his  appearance  to  a  French 
monk,  who  brought  one  of  his  relics  into  Yorkshire. 

^  Forbes  and  Neale,  Anc.  Gall.  Liturgies,  p.  15a.  Among  his  last 
words  were,  *  Well  know  I  what  country  that  is  which  God  promises  to 
His  servants.*  This  was  in  reference  to  a  dream  in  which  he  seemed  to 
see  the  Lord  giving  him  provision  for  a  journey  to  *  his  own  country' ; 
Constant,  ii.  19.  He  died  at  Ravenna,  whither  he  had  gone  as  an  envoy  from 
the  Armorican  insurgents  to  Valentinian  III.  See  Life  of  St.  German,  p.  258. 

^  The  Saxons  are  first  mentioned  in  the  second  century.  For  their  early 
connexion  with  Britain,  see  Gibbon,  iv.  388,  note  ;  ii.  70,  note  ;  iii.  262. 

*  I.e.  the  shore  most  exposed  to  Saxon  invasion;  Freeman,  Norm. 
Conq.  i.  11  ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  67  ;  Green,  Making  of  England, 
p.  20. 

*  De  40  cons.  Honor.  31  :  '  Maduerunt  Saxone  fuse  Orcades.'     Gibbon 

t 


24  The  Saxon  Conquest, 

CHAP.  I.  raids  on  their  part  had  harassed  Southern  Britain  and 
given  them  a  foothold  on  its  soil,  they  appear  about  the 
middle  of  the  fifth  century  as  entering  on  a  more  regular 
plan  of  conquest.  It  is  one  thing  to  form  settlements, 
another  to  found  kingdoms.  And  this  '  series  of  constant, 
systematic,  successful'  occupations  of  British  soil  was,  in 
the  words  of  the  historian  of  the  '  Norman  Conquest,'  one 
of  the  most '  fearful  blows '  that  ever  fell  on  any  nation  ^. 
In  order  to  appreciate  it,  we  must  remember  that  it  de- 
scended on  a  people  whom  the  indignant  rhetoric  of  Gildas 
depicts  as  divided  against  themselves  ^  incapable  of  any 
noble  national  life  ^,  abandoned,  within  memory,  by  their 
Roman  protectors  to  their  Pictish  tormentors  *,  and  rather 
weakened  than  disciplined  by  their  experience  of  Roman 
civilization  ^ :  a  people,  too,  described  by  the  same  authority 
as  so  prone  to  cruelty  and  falsehood  that  any  one  who  showed 
any  gentleness  or  any  love  of  truth  was  denounced  as  an 
enemy  of  the  country,  and  became  a  mark  for  his  neighbours* 
darts  ^.     And  the  blow  was  struck,  at  intervals  throughout 

admits  'some  degree  of  truth'  in  this  poetical  tribute  to  the  elder 
Theodosius ;  iii.  271.  For  Stilicho's  like  achievements,  see  Claudian,  de 
laud.  Stil.  ii.  253  :  — 

*  Illius  effectum  curis  .  .  .  ne  littore  tuto 
Prospicerem  dubiis  venturum  Saxona  ventis.' 
(This  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  Britain.)     See  Gibbon,  iv.  53.     For  the 
Saxon  iaroads  under  Valentinian  I,  when  Theodosius  was  employed,  see 

also  Ammianus,  xxvi.  4,  5,  '  Picti  Saxonesque Britannos  aerumnis 

vexavere  continuis,' 

^  Freeman,  i.  13,  20. 

^  Gildas,  de  Exc.  19.  We  have  to  remember  the  enmity  between  the 
Goidhelic,  Gaedhelic,  or  Gaelic  tribes  who  had  held  a  large  part,  especially 
the  south,  of  Wales,  and  the  '  Brythonic '  invaders  who  prevailed  over 
them  in  the  early  part  of  the  fifth  century.  Cunedda,  the  great  'Brython' 
from  South-West  Scotland,  who  established  the  '  Brythonic '  supremacy, 
had  assumed  the  position  formerly  held  by  the  Roman  '  dux  Britan- 
niarum.'  The  Welsh  explained  the  denunciations  of  Gildas  by  saying 
that  he  had  a  grudge  against  Arthur  for  killing  his  brother ;  Giraldus, 
Descr.  i.  2.  Guest  says  that  he  had  *  strong  Roiftan  prejudices,'  Orig. 
Celt.  ii.  174  :  Rhys,  that  he  was  *a  Brython  of  the  Brythons*  (Celtic 
Britain,  p.  258),  hostile  to  the  Goidels  or  Gael  of  South  Wales. 

'  Gild.  freq. ;  Gibbon,  iv.  390. 

*  Bede,  i.  12 ;  Gibbon,  iv.  131,  a.  d.  409.  See  too  the  Saxon  Chron.  for  418. 
'  'Desidiosorum,'  Gild,  praef. ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  68. 

*  Gild.  21  ;  followed  by  Bede,  i.  14  :  *  Crudelitas  praecipue,  et  odium 
veritatis,'  &c. 


The  Saxon  Conquest,  25 

a  century,  by  invaders  as  ferocious  as  they  were  energetic,  chap.  i. 
of  whom  a  contemporary  Gallic  bishop  says  that  the  Saxon 
pirates  were  '  the  most  truculent  of  all  enemies,'  and  that 
they  made  it  a  point  of  religion  '  to  torture  their  captives 
rather  than  put  them  to  ransom,'  and  to  sacrifice  the  tenth 
part  of  them  to  their  gods^.  An  idolatry  which  had  its 
centre  in  the  worship  of  Woden  and  of  Thunor  ^  was  sure 
to  render  its  votaries  doubly  terrible  to  a  Christian  popu- 
lation. Hence  it  is  that  we  have  to  read  of  devastations 
which  Gildas^  cannot  narrate  without  being  reminded  of 
the  Psalms  of  the  Captivity.  In  his  declamatory  verbiage 
we  see,  clearly  enough,  a  grim  picture  of  '  flashing  swords 
and  crackling  flame,'  of  ruined  walls,  fallen  towers,  altars 
shattered,  priests  and  bishops  and  people  slain  'in  the 
midst  of  the  streets,'  and  corpses  clotted  with  blood  and  left 
without  burial  ^ :  of  the  '  miserable  remnant,'  slaughtered 
in  the  mountains,  or  selling  themselves  as  slaves  to  the 
invader,  or  flying  beyond  sea,  or  finding  a  precarious 
shelter  in  the  forests^.  He  wrote  about  the  middle  of 
the  next  century,  and  at  a  time  when  the  '  foreign  wars ' 
appeared  to  have  ceased  ^ :  but  must  have  conversed  in  his 
youth  with  those  who  had  witnessed  the  devastation  in 
the  south-east  of  what  we  now  call  England:  and  Bede 
almost  transcribes  him,  although  simplifying  his  turgid 
phraseology"^.     Thus  we  are  enabled  to  feel,  as  it  were, 

^  Sidonius  Apollinaris,  Ep.  viii.  6.  So  Salvian,  De  Gubern.  Dei,  vii. 
15 :  *  Gens  Saxonum  crudelitate  efferi,  sed  castitate  mirandi.'  See  Milman, 
Lat.  Chr.  i.  332  ;  Lingard,  Angl.  Sax.  Ch.  i.  45.  Yet  theywere  not  cruel  in 
cold  blood. 

^  See  Green's  Making  of  England,  p.  164  ;  Taylor's  Words  and  Places, 
p.  321,  for  these  gods,  and  for  *Tiw  '  (whence  '  Tuesday'). 

3  Gild.  24  (Galland.  Bibl.  xii.  198).  He  quotes  *  Incendenmt  igni 
sanctuarium  tuum,'  and  '  Deus,  venerunt,'  &c. 

*  Welsh  legends  speak  of  members  of  the  pious  'family  of  Brychan' 
who  were  'martyred*  by  the  Heathen,  as  Cynog  at  Merthyr  Cynog,  and 
Tydvyl,  a  woman,  at  the  better-known  Merthyr  Tydvil.  See  Williams, 
Eccl.  Ant.  Cymry,  p.  115  ;  Rees,  Welsh  Saints,  p.  151.  On  the  other  two 
holy  '  families,*  see  Pryce,  p.  43. 

5  Gild.  25.     Cp.  Green,  p.  67. 

"  He  speaks  of  the  present  tranquillity,  the  unexpected  help  given  to 
Britons,  &c.,  26. 

^  Bede,  i.  15.  Wendover  adds  details  about  the  burning  of  the  Scriptures, 
and  heaping  earth  up  to  conceal  the  tombs  of  martyrs  ;  Flor.  Hist.  19. 


26  The  Rally  of  the  Britons, 

with  the  British  Christians  of  the  age  of  the  conquest, 
while  their  brethren  in  Kent,  after  the  defeat  at  Cray  ford, 
*  fled  in  terror  to  London  \'  and  the  native  forces,  sixteen 
years  later,  *  fled  from  the  Angles  like  fire  ^ ; '  while,  about 
the  time  of  the  fall  of  *  Augustulus,'  Ella  was  taking 
possession  of  Sussex;  while  Anderida — now  Pevensey — 
was  being  taken,  and  not  a  Briton  left  alive  ^;  while  the 
kingdom  which  was  to  absorb  all  the  rest  was  being  formed 
by  the  victories  of  Cerdic  the  West-Saxon,  in  508  and  519^ 
Then  came  something  like  a  definite  rally  of  the  natives  ^ : 
the  name  of  Arthur,  shining  through  a  golden  mist  of  fable, 
may  represent  a  historic  West-British  prince,  who  did 
much,  though  in  a  limited  area. 

To  break  the  heathen  and  uphold  the  Christ  \ 

That  fight  on  '  Badon  Hill,'  in  which,  according  to  a  vivid 
Welsh  legend,  'Arthur  bore  the  cross  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  three  days  and  three  nights  on  his  shield,  and  the 
Britons  were  conquerors  "^Z  and  which  the  wild  exaggera- 

^  Chron.  a.  457  ;  Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  37. 

^  Chron.  a.  473. 

'  Chron.  a.  491.  See  Gibbon,  iv.  394.  Henry  of  Huntingdon  says, 
'Locus  tantum,  quasi  nobilissimae  urbis,  transeuntibus  ostenditur 
desolatits.'  The  Roman  walls  and  towers  enclose  the  ruins  of  a  mediaeval 
castle,  and  form  a  parallelogram  of  three  sides.  See  Freeman,  iii.  401  ; 
Green,  p.  43. 

*  Chron.  a.  491.  In  508  Cerdic  slew  the  British  king  Natanleod.  The 
second  battle  was  at  Cerdicsford  or  Charford  in  519.  Cerdic  appears  in 
the  Chronicle  as  an  ealdorman  from  495  to  519,  when  he  is  described  as 
having  won  the  kingdom. 

^  On  the  character  of  the  British  *  resistance,'  see  Church,  Beginning 
of  Middle  Ages,  p.  76. 

*  Tennyson,  Poems,  p.  463.  *A  genuine  record  of  Arthur  would  be 
precious  beyond  words.  .  .  .  Arthur  is  a  real  man ;  but,  whatever  were 
his  acts,  they  could  not  have  been  the  acts  attributed  to  him  in  the 
legends;'  Freeman,  v.  584.  'In  our  Chronicle  there  is  nothing  about 
Arthur  ; '  Freeman,  Old-Eng.  Hist.  p.  35.  Yet  the  Chron.  names  Natan- 
leod. We  may  observe  Giraldus  Cambrensis'  phrase,  'Arturi  nostri 
famosi,  ne  dicam  fabulosi,'  Descr.  Camb.  ii.  2.  '  History  only  knows  him 
as  the  petty  prince  of  a  Devonian  principality.  .  .  .  The  modern  con- 
ception of  him  appears  first  in  Nennius;'  Pearson,  Early  and  Middle 
Ages  of  England,  p.  57.     Cp.  Rhys.  Celt.  Brit.  p.  234. 

'  Annales  Cambriae,  a.  516.  See  pref.  p.  xxiv.  A  clause  of  dubious 
genuineness  in  Gildas,  26,  '  qui  prope  Sabrinum  ostium  habetur,'  has  led 
to  the  identification  of  Mens  Badonicus  with  a  hill  above  Bath.  But 
Freeman  (I.e.)  and  Green  (Making  of  England,  p.  89),  following  Guest 


The  'Angltans'  in  Britain.  27 

tions  of  the  History  ascribed  to  Nennius  rank  as  the  chap.  i. 
twelfth  of  his  victories  \  has  been  assigned  to  493,  to  516,  and 
to  520  2 ;  and  appears  to  have  been  '  followed  by  a  general 
pause  in  the  English  advance^.'  But  while  the  tide  of 
Teuton  triumph  was  thus  far  stayed  in  the  south,  a  new 
body  of  Saxons  was  beginning  the  foundation  of  the  little 
realm  of  Essex,  destined  to  include  London^,  and  other 
invaders  of  properly  Anglian  race  were  taking  hold  of 
the  eastern  district  which  was  to  be  divided  between  them 
as  Northfolk  and  Southfolk  ^,  extending  their  grasp  over 
Lindsey  or  North  Lincolnshire,  and  so  completing  the 
conquest  of  the  long  coast-line  of  '  the  Saxon  Shore.'  Other 
Anglians  next  invaded  Yorkshire ;  and  the  '  imperial  city ' 
on  the  Ouse,  which  had  seen  the  deaths  of  Severus  and 
Constantius,  became  the  prey  of  the  barbarian,  probably 
about  the  beginning  of  the  sixth  century^.  Still  the  de- 
stroying storm  rolled  north w^ard ;  and  at  length,  in  547,  as 
the  Chronicler  tells  us  with  emphatic  simplicity,  '  Ida  began 
to  reign,  from  whom  arose  the  royal  race  of  Northumbrian 
The  base  of  his  operations  was  grandly  chosen.     High  on 

(Orig.  Celt.  ii.  189),  place  it  at  Badbury  in  Dorset.  Skene  places  it  in 
Scotland,  Celt.  Scotl.  i.  153. 

^  'Nennius'  says  that  840  men,  in  that  one  day,  fell  by  the  king's 
single  hand.  The  Historia  Britonum  is  ascribed  to  'Nennius,'  a  disciple 
of  Elbod  (bishop  of  Bangor,  who  died  in  809),  and  is  dated  in  a.d.  858. 
But  this  date  is  only  in  one  MS.,  and  the  shorter  prologue  which  names 
the  author  without  giving  the  date  is  only  in  five  out  of  thirty.  See 
Mon.  Hist.  Brit.  i.  63.  The  work  is  a  compilation,  of  various  dates  ;  see 
Stevenson's  Nennius,  p.  xv  ;  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  iv.  17  ;  Whitley  Stokes  on 
Tripartite  Life  of  St.  Patrick,  i.  p.  cxvii. 

2  The  Annales  Cambriae  say  516.  Gildas,  c.  26,  seems  to  say  that  he 
is  writing  in  the  44th  year  from  this  battle  :  Bede  understood  him  to 
reckon  it  as  the  44th  year  from  the  first  invasion,  i.  16 ;  and  Rhys  so 
takes  it,  placing  the  battle  in  493 ;  Celt.  Britain,  p.  108.  Plummer  accepts 
493,  but  reckons  the  '  44th  year '  from  it,  as  if  Gildas  wrote  'c.  537.'  But 
had  Bede  any  reason  for  493,  other  than  his  own  '  forced '  construction  ? 
The  Ann.  Cambr.  say  516.  For  the  date  520,  see  Guest,  Orig.  Celt.  ii.  187. 
Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  89  ;  Palgrave,  Engl.  Commonwealth,  p.  397. 

=»  Green,  I.e.     See  Gildas,  I.e. 

*  Erkenwin,  the  first  East-Saxon  king,  is  dated  in  526  or  530.  Essex 
was  never  an  independent  kingdom  ;  Palgrave,  Anglo-Sax.  p.  40. 

5  Green,  p.  51.  It  was  then  that  the  great  Roman  fort  of  Garianonum 
or  Burghcastle,  near  Yarmouth,  became  a  ruin,  which  afterwards  sheltered 
an  Irish  missionary  saint,  Fursey. 

^  See  Raine,  Historians  of  Church  of  York,  i.  p.  xviii ;  Green,  p.  63. 


28  The  Angltans, 

the  coast  of  our  present  Northumberland,  towers  up  a  rock 
which  might  seem  marked  out  by  nature  for  the  strong- 
hold and  palace  of  a  conqueror:  it  had  been  called 
Dingueirin,  and  took  the  name  of  Bamborough,  or  Bebba's 
burgh,  from  the  wife  of  a  later  Anglian  prince  \  some 
thirty  years  after  it  had  been  roughly  fortified  ^  by  King 
Ida.  The  Britons,  who  trembled  ^  as  they  heard  of  his 
progress  through  Bryneich,  Berneth,  or  Bernicia,  the  region 
between  the  Tees  ^  and  the  Firth  of  Forth,— lying  north 
of  that  district  of  Deifyr,  Deur,  or  Deira,  which  after  his 
death  obeyed  the  strong  rule  of  another  Anglian,  ^lla  or 
Ella, — would  hardly  have  believed  a  prophet  who  should 
have  told  them  that  within  about  eighty  years  from  Ida's 
arrival,  his  royal  seat  would  be  occupied  by  a  far  mightier 
prince,  devoted  heart  and  soul  to  Christianity.  A  fresh 
impulse  now  stirred  among  the  West-Saxons,  and  Cynric, 
son  of  Cerdic,  defeated  the  Britons  at  Sarum  and  Barbury^: 
his  successor  Ceawlin,  after  defeating  at  Wimbledon  a 
young  Kentish  king  named  Ethelbert  ^,  acquired  our  own 

^  Ethelfrid,  according  to  the  'appendix'  to  Nennius.  See  Mon.  Hist. 
Brit.  pp.  74,  76.  Bede  says,  'a  regina  quondam  vocabulo  Bebba,'  iii.  6; 
cp.  16.  Alcuin  calls  the  city  Bebba,  De  Pontif.  Ebor.  305.  See  Freeman, 
Engl.  Towns  and  Districts,  p.  273. 

-  A.-S.  Chr.  a.  547  :  '  At  first  enclosed  by  a  hedge,  afterwards  by  a 
wall.'     For  the  later  castle,  see  Marmion,  ii.  8. 

^  Palgrave,  Anglo-Sax.  p.  43  ;  Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  72.  Burton 
says  that  he  seems  to  have  ruled  northwards  to  the  Tay  ;  Hist.  Scotl.  i. 
278.  It  is  commonly  said  that  the  Britons  called  him  the  '  Flamebearer.* 
But  Skene  says  that  it  was  Theodric,.  the  sixth  Bernician  king,  for  whose 
name  they  substituted  that  epithet ;  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  159.  Prof.  Ehys 
traces  'Bernicians'  up  to  'Brigantes,'  the  old  'Brython'  or  British  in- 
habitants of  the  North-country,  and  *  Deirans '  to  the  British  name 
*Deivr' ;  Celtic  Britain,  p.  112. 

*  Lingard  makes  the  Tees  the  northern  limit  of  Deira,  i.  69.  So 
Freeman,  Old-Engl.  Hist.  p.  38  ;  Raine,  Historians  of  Ch.  of  York,  i. 
p.  xvii.  Palgrave  says  that  the  land  between  Tees  and  Tyne,  at  first  neutral, 
was  ultimately  included  in  Deira  ;  Anglo-Sax.  p.  43. '  It  must  be  observed 
that  Reged,  a  district  placed  by  Palgrave  and  Freeman  on  the  north  of 
the  Solway,  offered  fierce  resistance  to  the  Angles  ;  and  Elmete,  a  part  of 
the  West  Riding,  was  not  conquered  until  the  reign  of  Edwin  ;  Nennius, 
63,  (66). 

'  Sax.  Chron.  a.  552,  556 ;  see  Gibbon,  iv.  391 ;  Green,  p.  94.  Barbury 
Camp  is  near  Swindon. 

'  '^thelbriht,'  Chron.  568. 


Completion  of  the  Conquest.  29 

Oxfordshire  country  through  his  brother's  victory  at  Bed-  chap. 
ford  in  571  ^ ;  and  after  slaying  three  British  kings  at  the 
battle  of  Deorham  in  577,  became  master  of  their  three 
cities,  Gloucester,  Cirencester,  and  Bath  ^.  Six  years  later 
he  penetrated  to  the  borders  of  Cheshire,  and  took  two 
towns  belonging  to  the  Mid- Welsh  kingdom  of  Powys  ^ : 
and  though  he  sustained  a  severe  check,  which  forced 
him  to  retire  southwards,  his  name  must  have  represented 
to  the  Britons  that  force  and  fury  of  '  Heathen '  aggression 
which  they  might  now  have  come  to  regard  as  irresistible. 
Large  masses  of  their  race  had  been  simply  slaughtered  ^ : 
many  had  become  slaves,  or  passed  into  a  'half-servile 
condition ' :  it  seemed  to  be  only  a  question  of  time  when 
the  work  of  conquest  should  be  perfected :  but  there  was 
still  a  large  tract,  the  whole  west,  independent  of  the 
invader.  The  kingdom  of  Cumbria,  or,  in  a  widened  sense, 
Strathclyde  ^,  extending  from  the  Firth  of  Clyde  to  the 

1  Chron.  571,  Cutliwulf  took  Bensington,  Aylesbury,  Eynsham,  and 
Leighton  Buzzard ;  Green,  p.  123. 

*  Chron.  577.  This  victory  cut  off  British  communication  between 
Wales  and  the  south-west ;  Green,  p.  128.  A  long  strip  of  territory 
extending  southward  to  the  Axe  became  Saxon,  the  Britons  being  cooped 
up  between  the  forests  of  Bradon  and  Selwood.  Deorham  is  ar  village  to 
the  north  of  Bath,  and  west  of  the  Fosse-road. 

^  See  Guest,  Orig.  Celt.  ii.  288  ff.,  for  the  destruction  of  Pengwern 
(Shrewsbury)  and  Uriconium  at  the  base  of  the  Wrekin,  by  the  West 
Saxons,  and  their  subsequent  defeat  at  Fethanleagh  (Faddiley).  The 
Welsh  elegy  on  '  Kyndylan,'  Prince  of  Powys,  tells  how  he  was  defeated 
and  slain  by  the  Loegyrwys  (Saxons),  how  his  'hall'  at  Pengwern  (Shrews- 
bury) was  burnt,  and  he  was  buried  at  '  Bassa's  churches,*  probably 
Baschurch  near  Shrewsbury.  The  White  Town  involved  in  this  disaster 
is  supposed  to  be  Uriconium. 

*  See  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  69 ;  Freeman,  1.  18,  and  Four  Oxford 
Lectures,  p.  75.  The  'extermination/  where  it  took  place,  was  such  as 
to  be  compatible  with  the  continuance  of  many  Britons  as  slaves  or  as 
'  impoverished  peasants '  (Gneist,  Hist.  Engl.  Constit.  i.  2),  while  one 
race,  as  such,  '  displaced  '  another  in  possession  of  the  territory.  Late  in 
the  seventh  century,  Ine's  laws  recognize  a  number  of  free  as  well  as  of 
enthralled  'Welsh.' 

5  Freeman,  i.  14.  The  close  connexion  of  Strathclyde  with  '  Wales ' 
appears  in  the  Life  of  St.  Kentigern.  Persecuted  at  Glasgow  in  540,  he 
retires  into  Wales,  until  recalled  in  573  by  a  truly  Christian  king  of 
Strathclyde,  Rederech  or  Rhydderc,  *  the  Generous '  ;  Bishop  Forbes,  Kal. 
p.  369.  Palgrave  divides  the  Regnum  Cumbrense  into  Strathclyde  proper. 
Reged,  and  Cumberland  with  Westmoreland  and  Lancashire,  the  extent 


30 


Gildas  on  the  Britons, 


CHAP.  I.  Derwent,  and  the  district  between  the  Derwent  and  the 
Dee,  sometimes  included  within  Strathclyde,  was  purely 
British:  the  region  which  the  English  gradually  came 
to  look  upon  as  'Wales/  the  land  of  the  'foreigners^/ 
and  'West  Wales/  or  Devon  and  Cornwall  and  part  of 
Somerset,  including  the  sacred  'Avalon^/  were  still,  in 
British  eyes,  unpolluted  by  the  barbarian's  tread.  Corn- 
wall had  been  for  many  years  receiving  and  honouring 
a  succession  of  missionaries  from  Ireland,  including  some 
women,  whose  pious  toil  has  dotted  the  county  with  places 
bearing  a  saintly  name^.  But  what  of  the  Kymrians 
Gildas  7  generally  ?  If  we  put  the  date  of  Gildas'  work,  the  '  History,' 
"^T^^  so  called,  and  the  Epistle,  or  Admonition,  either  somewhat 
before  or  somewhat  after  the  middle  of  this  century,  we  find 
the  condition  of  his  countrymen  at  that  period  described 
in  lurid  colours  *.  The  vague  charges  against  the  Britons 
of  the  fifth  century  reappear  as  detailed  indictments  against 
those  of  the  sixth.  The  first  shock  of  invasion  had  awed 
the  nation  into  repentance;  but  with  quieter  times  the 
old  sins  came  back  ^.  The  '  kings '  or  princes  of  the  purely 
British  districts  were  '  tyrants '  who  acted  as  if  almsgiving 
would  compensate  for  any  sin.  One  of  them,  in  contempt 
of  his  solemn  oath,  had  slain  two  royal  youths  whom  an 

of  strathclyde  under  Khydderc.  The  capital  of  the  kingdom  was  Alcluid, 
or  Dunbritton,  now  Dunbarton.  The  name  of  '  Cumbri '  was  not  used  by 
its  inhabitants  until  the  tenth  century.  In  the  twelfth  the  country  was 
called  both  'Cumbria'  and  <  Cambria.'  Skene,  ap.  Bp.  Forbes,  Lives  of 
Ninian  and  Kentigern,  p.  331.  See  Khys,  Celtic  Britain,  p.  143  ;  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  ii.  4. 

^  Cp.  '  Walling-ford,'  ' "Walla '-ford  in  Devon,  and  'Corn- wall.' 

*  The  land  between  the  Mendips  and  the  Parret  became  Saxon  in  658. 

3  E.  g.  SS.  Piran,  Sennen,  Feock,  Germoc,  Rumon  or  Ruan,  and  the 
virgin  saints  Breaca,  Burian,  and  la,  the  last  of  whom  is  said  to  have 
been  martyred,  with  her  brother  Uni  and  with  Gwythian,  near  St.  Ives 
Bay.     On  Piran,  see  Borlase,  Age  of  the  Saints,  p.  22. 

*  See  above,  p.  24.  For  Gildas,  see  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  356 ;  Lappen- 
berg,  i.  123 ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  156 ;  also  PearSon,  Vindic.  Ignat.  i. 
79.  He  is  called  Gildas  the  Wise,  or  Gildas  Badonicus  ;  see  Alb.  Butler, 
Jan.  29,  and  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  ii.  671. 

5  Gild.  26  ;  Bede,  i.  22.  '  Attamen  recente  adhuc  memoria,'  &c.  Com- 
pare St.  Patrick's  denunciation  of  Coroticus  (Keredig,  a  son  of  Cunedda, 
who  gave  his  name  to  Cardigan)  ;  a  Christian  by  profession,  he  had 
committed  unchristian  cruelties  in  Ireland,  and  might  be  supposed  to 
despise  Irish  Christianity  (Ep.  ad  Christianos  Corotici  tyranni  subditos). 


Gildas  on  the  Britons,  31 

abbot  strove  to  protect  by  throwing  his  cloak  around  chap.  i. 
them  ^ :  another '  thirsted  for  civil  war  and  spoil  ^  ' :  a  third  ^ 
and  a  fourth*  were  the  slaves  of  sensuality:  a  fifth, 
Maelgwyn,  chief  among  British  kings,  after  overthrowing 
his  predecessor  had  in  compunction  taken  the  vows  of  a 
monk,  and  then  relapsed  into  worse  than  his  former 
excesses  ^.  The  clergy  were  debased  by  secular  and  even 
vicious  habits^,  and  neglectful  of  sacred  duties,  and  of 
pastoral  exhortation,  and  even  of  the  decencies  of  priestly 
life;  simony  was  rife  among  priests  and  bishops"^  (it  is 
evident  that  a  bishopric  was  still  a  well- endowed  office  ^) ; 
and  even  those  who  lived  respectably  were  careless  or 
cowardly  in  regard  to  rebuking  sin^.  Gildas  clearly 
carries  the  vehement  '  reproaches,'  which  characterize  his 

^  Constantine  (Cystennyn)  of  Devon  and  Cornwall.  Gild.  28.  Yet 
he  became  *  St.  Constantine,'  having  '  turned  to  the  Lord '  in  589, 
i.e.  entered  a  monastery.  Ann.  Camb.,  and  see  Bp.  Forbes,  Kalendars, 
p.  312  ;  Guest,  Orig.  Celt.  ii.  196,  261  ;  and  Bp.  Jones  and  Freeman, 
p.  244. 

^  Aurelius  Conanus,  of  Powys ;  Gild.  30.  Probably  a  descendant  of 
that  Ambrosius  Aurelianus  whom  Gildas  and  Bede  describe  as  of  Roman 
family,  and  who  after  the  Romans'  departure  had  succeeded  to  the  chief 
command  in  south-east  Britain  with  the  title  of  '  Gwledig'  (ruler). 

'  Vortipor  of  Demetia,  or  Dyved,  the  west  part  of  South  Wales ;  Gild. 
31.     He  was  already  elderly. 

*  Cuneglas ;  Gild.  32. 

^  King  of  Gywnedd  or  North  Wales,  otherwise  called  Venedot  (his 
abode  being  in  Anglesey).  He  was,  perhaps,  the  leader  of  the  Britons 
when  defeated  at  Barbury  in  556  ;  Guest,  p.  197  ;  a  man  of  great  force, 
and  the  head  of  the  house  of  Cunedda  (Rhys,  Celt.  Brit.  p.  123,  who 
doubts  Gildas'  charges).  He  seems  to  have  combined  sensuality  and 
tyranny  with  moods  of  fervid  devotion,  being  recorded  among  the 
benefactors  of  Llandaff  as  well  as  of  Bangor.     He  died  of  a  pestilence  in 

547. 

6  Gildas  begins  this  *  increpatio/  '  Britain  has  priests,  but  they  are 
foolish.'  See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  13,  359.  Gildas  owns  that  there  are 
a  few  good  pastors,  no,  and  that  he  prefers  their  lives  *  cunctis  mundi 
opibus ' ;  65. 

'  He  speaks  of  bad  men  attempting  to  cover  their  evil  reputation  by 
thus  purchasing  ecclesiastical  dignity.  Some,  if  public  opinion  condemned 
them,  would  travel  abroad,  and  return  in  stately  array  ;  67.  Columban 
refers  to  this  language  of  *  Giltas,'  ap.  Greg.  Ep.  ix.  127. 

*  *  Vos  episcopatum  ....  avaritiae  gratia  .  .  .  cupitis  ; '  Gild.  108  ;  see 
ib.  67,  *  tam  pretiosum  quaestum,' 

^  He  cites  Eli ;  *  Quid  profuit  Heli  sacerdoti,'  &c.,  69. 


32  Gildas  on  the  British  Church, 

HAP.  I.  '  book  of  Complaints  \'  to  a  point  beyond  equitable  and 
discriminating  rebuke;  they  provoke  our  incredulity  by 
their  very  violence;  but  they  cannot  be  without  some 
serious  foundation.  We  learn  from  him  incidentally,  not 
only  that  the  hierarchy  was  regularly  organized,  that  the 
'  priests '  claimed  power  to  bind  and  to  loose,  and  that 
bishops  were  believed  to  succeed  the  Apostles  2,  and  indeed 
to  sit  in  the  chair  of  Peter  ^  (a  significant  phrase  when 
used  for  any  bishop's  office),  but  that  the  hands  of  priests 
and  inferior  ministers  were  anointed  *,  and  certain  lessons, 
from  the  Epistles  and  from  the  Acts,  were  read  at  ordina- 
tion^. That  the  Britisk-xitual  had  a  special  character, 
distinct  not  only  from  the  Roman,  buF^aTso  from  the 
Gallican,  has  been  inferred  from  a  curious  document  of 
the  eighth  century,  which  traces  the  SScotic'  Liturgy 
through  German  and  Lupus  to  St.  Mark,  the  Gallic  through 
St.  Irenaeus  to  St.  John  ^.     But  the  statement,  which  has 

^  Be  Excidio  Britanniae  Liber  Querulus.  Comp.  Bede,  i.  22,  '  flebilis 
sermo.'  He  says  that  he  had  refrained  for  ten  years  from  writing,  but  his 
indignation  at  the  sins  of  his  countrymen  could  no  longer  be  suppressed. 
It  is  divided  into  the  'Historia'  and  the  '  Epistola '  (Mon.  H.  Brit.\ 
which  is  subdivided  into  the  '  Increpatio  in  reges '  (described  by 
Gallandius,  Bibl.  Patr.  xii.  200,  as  the  '  Epistola '  proper)  and  that  '  in 
clerum.' 

'^  Increp.  in  Cler.  66,  92,  108,  109. 

^  'Sedem  Petri  Apostoli  immundis  pedibus  usurpantes  ;'  66.  Compare 
Lib.  Landav.  p.  18.  This  way  of  speaking  carries  out  the  old  idea  that 
St.  Peter  was  (not  the  ruler,  but)  the  representative,  of  the  other  Apostles, 
and  in  them  of  their  successors  the  bishops.  See  Transl.  of  St.  Cyprian, 
Lib.  Fath.  vol.  i.  p.  150.  Gildas  also  takes  Matt.  xvi.  18  as  '  said  to  the  true 
priest.' 

*  Gild.,  106,  '  initiantur  sacerdotum  vel  ministrorum  manus.'  See 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  Councils,  i.  141  ;  Warren,  Lit.  and  Kit.  p.  70. 

■'  I  Peter  i.  3-5,  13-16,  22,  23,  ii.  1-3,  9 ;  Acts  i.  15  fF.;  i  Tim.  iii.  i  ff. 

*  This  document  affirms  that  (i)  John  the  Evangelist  first  sang  the 
*  Cursus  Gallorum ' :  from  him  it  came  to  Lyons  :  in  time  it  was  enlarged 
and  widely  diffused:  (2)  according  to  St.  Jerome,  St.  Mark  first  sang  the 
'cursus'  now  called  Scotic, — and  after  him  Gregory  Nazianzen  (!),  then 
Cassian,  and  Honoratus  of  Lerins,  and  German  and  Lupus,  who  preached 
in  Britain  and  appointed  Patrick  archbishop  in  Britain  and  Ireland,  who 
sang  the  same  course, — as  did  Comgall  and  Columban  ;  *  and  if  you  do  not 
believe  us,  search  in  the  life  of  blessed  Columban.'  See  Haddan  and 
Stubbs,  i.  139.  Palmer  thinks  that  the  writer  is  not  referring  to  the 
British  Liturgy  as  such  ;  that  that  Liturgy  was  essentially  Gallican  ;  that, 
lefore  Patrick's  time,  Irish  Christians  had  a  similar  use  ;  that  for  some 


British  Colleges,  33 

some  wild  errors  of  detail,  really  says  nothing  about  the   chap.  i. 

original  British  use,  which  was  apparently  identical  with 

the  Galilean;  nor  is  it  probable  that  German  materially 

altered  the  use  which  he  found  in  Britain.    The  peculiarities 

of  the  British  and  Irish — then  called  Scottish — Churches, 

in  regard  to  the  calculation  of  Easter  and  one  or  two  points 

of  ceremonial,  will  come  before  us  hereafter. 

Admitting   a   considerable  element   of   exaggeration   in 
Gildas'  invectives,  we  still  need  to  remember  the  incoherencies 
of  Celtic  character  in  order  to  understand  how  there  could 
be,  at  the  same  period,  a  burst  of  religious  activity  in  the 
Welsh  Church,  although  that  activity  did  not  involve  any 
attempt  to  evangelize  the  detested  and  dreaded  Saxons  ^. 
Colleges  or  monasteries  did  much  for  study  and  devotion, —  Welsh 
often  bearing  the  name  of  Bangor'^,  that  is  'high  choir '  j^^d^^*^^ 
or  '  circle,'  or  eminent  community.     One  of  these  was  the  Saints, 
famous  Bangor  '  Iscoed,'  founded  by  Dunawd,  or  Dunod, 
and  his  three  sons,  in  the  south-east  corner  of  Flintshire, 
for  a  community  which  was  said  to  contain  more  than  two 
thousand   monks   at   the   time   of    its    sudden    and   total 
destruction  3.     Another   was   the   Bangor   still   known   as 

time  after  Patrick,  the  Roman  use  prevailed  in  Ireland,  but  that  a  different 
use  was  introduced  by  means  of  David,  Gildas,  and  Cadoc  ;  Orig.  Lit.  i. 
178  flf.  Bp.  Forbes  infers  from  early  Irish  liturgical  remains  that,  so  far 
as  we  can  learn,  the  earliest  Liturgy  'used  in  these  islands  was  Ephesine,' 
i.  e.  Gallican  ;  Preface  to  Arbuthnott  Missal,  p.  x.  Cp.  Warren,  Liturgy 
and  Ritual  of  Celtic  Church,  p.  6i  ;  and  Duchesne,  Origines  du  Culte,  p. 
148,  who  says  that  of  the  ancient  liturgical  MSS.  of  Britain  only  one, 
the  antiphonary  of  Bangor,  is  purely  non-Roman ; — the  rest  exhibit  a 
Roman  rite  with  Gallican  elements. 

'  Bede,  i.  22  ;  '  addebant  .  .  .  ut  nunquam  genti  Saxonum  .  .  .  verbum 
fidei  praedicando  committerent.*  See  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  252.  Arch- 
deacon Pryce  pleads  that  'the  merciless  policy  of  the  invaders'  would 
have  made  such  an  enterprise  hopeless;  Anc.  Brit.  Ch.  p.  113.  Yet  see 
Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  90,  on  the  long  *  inaction '  of  the  West 
Saxons  after  their  defeat  at  Badbury,  a.  d.  520-552.  The  point  is,  not 
that  much  was  not  done,  but  that  (from  whatever  motive)  nothing  was 
attempted. 

2  For  the  great  Irish  *  Bangor,'  near  Carrickfergus,  founded  by  St. 
Comgall  about  559,  see  Lanigan,  Eccl.  Hist.  Irel.  ii.  62.  Glastonbury  was 
sometimes  called  Bangor  Wydrin ;  Williams,  Eccl.  Ant.  Cym.  p.  212. 

^  Bede,  ii.  2.  Iscoed  =^  underwood.  This  house  was  called  also  '  the  great 
Bangor  in '  (the  district  of)  '  Maclor.'  See  Chron.  Anc.  Brit.  Ch.  p.  162  ; 
Rees,  Welsh  Saints,  pp.  206,  256.     It  was  said  to  be  occupied  by  seven 

D 


34  British  Colleges, 

CHAP.  1.  such,  of  which  Daniel  was  the  first  head  ^  at  once  abhot 
and  bishop,  a  combination  not  unfrequent  in  Celtic  churches  ^. 
Another  Bangor  was  our  St.  Asaph,  or  Llan  Elwy,  said  to 
have  been  founded  under  the  direction  of  Kentigern  2,  the 
famous  bishop  of  Glasgow,  surnamed  Munghu  (kind  and 
dear),  the  teacher  and  friend  of  Asaph  *.  Another  celebrated 
house,  to  which  a  fabulous  antiquity  was  ascribed  ^,  flourished 
at  Caer  Worgorn,  and  had  for  its  president  Illtyd,  who  is 
said  to  have  taught  his  scholars  *  all  the  arts '  then  current, 
and  from  whom  the  place  takes  its  present  name  of 
Llantwit  Major.  Besides  these  there  were  St.  Cadoc's  ^ 
college  at  Llancarfan,  also  a  dependency  of  LlandafF, — the 
White  House,  or  Whitland,  in  Carmarthenshire,  founded 
by   Paulinus   or   Paul   Hen  "^ ; — and   the   great  college   of 

classes  of  monks,  each  containing  300  men.  See  Raine,  Fast.  Ebor.  i.  13  ; 
Pryce,  Anc.  Brit.  Ch.  pp.  176,  184. 

^  He  is  said  to  have  died  in  584  (Annal.  Camb.).  His  house  was  called 
*  the  great  Bangor  over  Conway  '.  He  ranks  as  *  one  of  the  three  blessed 
youth-trainers  of  Britain.'     See  Pryce,  p.  146. 

^  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  142  ;  Chron.  of  Brit.  Ch.  pp.  83,  127  ;  Todd, 
St.  Patrick,  p.  27. 

^  According  to  the  legend,  a  North  Welsh  king,  probably  Maelgwyn, 
gave  Kentigern  the  ground  by  the  Elwy.  '  Men  of  all  ages  and  ranks 
pressed  into  the  monastery,  to  the  number  of  965 ; '  Bishop  Forbes, 
Kalendars  of  Scottish  Saints,  p.  368.  Kentigern,  on  his  way  into  Wales, 
appears  to  have  '  turned  aside '  to  evangelize  parts  of  Cumberland  where 
heathenism  still  lingered,  and  to  have  erected  a  cross  at  '-  Crosfeld  *  or 
Crosthwaite.  Bp.  Forbes,  Lives  of  SS.  Ninian  and  Kentigern,  p.  Ixxxiii, 
names  eight  Cumbrian  churches  as  dedicated  to  him. 

*  *  They  who  withstand  God's  word,'  said  Asaph,  '  envy  man's  salvation.' 
Like  some  great  Irish  monasteries,  their  house  had  nearly  i,cx>o  inmates. 
Kentigern  was  favoured  by  a  Cadwallon,  king  of  Gwynedd. 

'  It  was  called  Cor  Tewdws,  as  founded  by  Theodosius  I  or  II  (!).  See 
Rees,  p.  128.  On  Iltutus,  Hhe  knight,'  'the  excellent  master,'  see  Alb. 
Butler,  Nov.  6 ;  Smith's  Bede,  p.  724 ;  Rees,  p.  180  ;  Williams,  p.  132  ; 
Pryce,  Anc.  Brit.  Ch.  p.  182.  He  was  a  Glamorganshire  saint,  and 
a  church  at  Ilston  in  Gower  is  dedicated  to  him. 

*  Rees,  p.  142  ;  Chron.  Anc.  Brit.  Ch.  p.  81  ,*  Williams,  p.  219  ;  Pryce, 
p.  182.  Cadoc,  or  Cattwg,  called  the  Wise,  is  said  to  have  resigned 
a  princely  heritage  for  the  sake  of  a  religious  life.  Rhys  calls  him  a  rival 
of  David  ;   Celt.  Britain,  p.  258. 

'  Bangor  y  Ty-Gwyn  ;  'Alba  Domus,*  Girald.  Itin.  Camb.  i.  10  ;  Piyce. 
p.  181.  David,  and  Teilo  the  second  bishop  of  Llandaff,  are  said  to  have 
studied  under  Paulinus.  The  latter's  epitaph  exists  in  Carmarthenshire  ; 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  164  ;  Hiibner,  No.  82  (' Servator  fidei  .  .  cultor 
pientissimus  aequi,'  &c.).     He  was  '  a  bishop,  but  without  a  see.' 


British  Synods,  35 

Llanbadarn-faur,  founded  by  a  Breton  named  Padarn,  the  ohai>.  r. 
first  of  a  line  of  bishops  that  sat  within  its  precinct  ^,  where 
one  of  the  most  venerable  churches  in  the  Principality  still 
attracts  English  visitors  from  the  neighbouring  Aberystwyth. 
We  also  read  of  Welsh  synods;  one  at  Llanddewi-Brefi, 
in  Cardiganshire,  which  has  been  erroneously  supposed  to 
have  renewed  the  defeat  of  Pelagianism  ^ ;  another,  which 
from  a  similar  error  was  called  'the  Synod  of  Victory",' 
and  is  dated  by  the  Cambrian  Annals  in  569 ;  it  was 
properly  the  Synod  of  the  Wood  of  Victory,  being  held 
on  the  site  of  a  battle  in  which  Britons  had  been  successful. 
Canons '  preserved  in  the  north  of  France,  obviously  through 
Brittany,' — the  old  Armorica  now  acquiring  that  name  as 
the  refuge  of  Britons  *,— are  probably  to  be  assigned  to 
these  assemblies :  one  of  these  enactments  is  suggestive, 
for  it  fixes  the  penance  of  '  a  Christian  who  has  acted  as 
guide  to  the  barbarians^.'     We  find   the   Welsh   Church 

^  He  sat  there  for  twenty-one  years,  and  afterwards  returned  to 
Armorica  ;  thence  went  to  the  Franks,  among  whom  he  died.  He  is  said 
to  have  twice  excommunicated  the  king  of  Gwent ;  Pryce,  p.  165.  See 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  145.  One  of  his  disciples  was  Avan,  who  was 
bishop  of  Llanafan-faur  ;  ib.  146,  166.  On  that  church  see  Girald.  Itin. 
Camb.  i.  i.  The  last  bishop  of  Llanbadarn-faur,  Idnerth,  was  slain  by  his 
people  (Bp.  Jones  and  Freeman,  p.  266)  in  the  eighth  century. 

^  This  is  obviously  a  'reverberation'  of  the  proceedings  of  German. 
(I  owe  this  expression  to  the  present  Bishop  of  St.  David's,  formerly  its 
historian.)  The  date  sometimes  given,  519,  is  much  too  early :  see  it  in 
Mansi,  viii.  583,  where  Giraldus'  account  is  cited— how  Daniel  and 
Dubricius  induced  David  to  attend  the  synod,  when  attempts  to  convert 
the  Pelagians  had  failed  ;  how  David,  though  standing  on  level  ground, 
made  himself  heard  by  the  whole  assembly  ;  how  the  ground  beneath  him 
rose  into  a  hill,  on  which  afterwards  a  church  was  built  in  his  honour  ; 
how  the  heresy  utterly  vanished  ;  h(?w  David  succeeded  Dubricius  as  arch- 
bishop of  all  Cambria  (having  been  previously  consecrated  at  Jerusalem\ 
and  removed  the  archbishopric  to  Menevia.  Giraldus  (Rolls  Series),  iii. 
399,  &c. 

^  Giraldus,  De  Vit.  Da  v.  9  (iii.  401),  and  Itin.  Camb.  ii.  4  (vi.  120'. 
He  calls  it  a  synod  of  bishops,  abbots,  and  all  the  clergy,  '  una  cum 
populo.* 

*  Among  the  Britons  who  became  saints  of  Armorica  were  Maclovius 
or  *  St.  Malo,'  the  Machutus  of  our  calendar,  and  Sampson  of  Dol. 

'  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  116 -118.  It  was  long  aftei-wards  assumed  that 
these  synods  must  have  been  held  by  authority  of  the  Roman  see,  an 
'  assertion  obviously  absurd  as  applied  to  the  Welsh  Church  of  the  sixth 
century.' 

D  2 


36  Dubricius  and  David, 

CHAP.  I.  receiving  Irish  disciples,  such  as  Finnian  of  Clonard  ^  and 
thus  promoting  a  revival  of  religious  devotion  in  their 
country.  Gildas  himself  crossed  the  Irish  sea  in  order  to 
aid  in  this  work,  and  died  in  Ireland  in  570  ^ :  and  the 
great  Irish-born  missionary  St.  Columba  directed  a  criminal 
who  professed  contrition  to  spend  twelve  years  in  penance 
among  the  Britons  ^.  Finally,  among  the  eminent  Cymric 
bishops*  of  this  period,  beside  those  who  have  been 
mentioned,  two  stand  out  as  typical,  Dubricius  or  Dyfrig, 
whom  the  church  of  Llandaff,  in  its  renovated  beauty, 
owns  as  its  first  bishop^, — who  lived  on  through  twelve 
years  of  the  seventh  century  and  died  in  retirement  in 
the  sacred  isle  of  Bardsey  ^ :  and  he  whose  late  and 
extravagant  legend"^  is  in  such  strange  contrast  to  the 
little  that  can  be  ascertained  about  his  life,— the  national 
St.  David,  saint  of  Wales,  Dewi  or  David.  His  time,  like  that  of 
Dubricius   and  others,  has  been  antedated,  for   the   sake 

^  One  of  the  two  Finnians  under  whom  Columba  studied.  This  Finnian 
had  twelve  disciples,  *  called  the  twelve  apostles  of  Erin.'  His  namesake 
was  of  Moville. 

^  The  Irish  saints  who  had  come  under  the  influence  of  David,  Cadoc, 
and  Gildas,  were  called  those  of  '  the  second  order ' ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs, 
i.  115- 

^  Adamnan,  Vit.  S.  Columb.  i.  22. 

*  The  reverence  of  the  Welsh  for  their  sainted  bishops  appeared,  as 
otherwise,  so  in  their  regarding  an  oath  on  a  saint's  handbell,  or  pastoral 
staff,  as  more  sacred  than  on  the  Gospels  ;  Girald.  Itin.  Camb.  i.  2. 

5  See  Monast.  Angl.  vi.  p.  1217  ff.  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  158  ;  Pryce, 
Anc.  Brit.  Ch.  p.  160.  The  second  bishop,  after  his  resignation,  was 
Teliau  or  Teilo,  who,  according  to  the  legend,  was  the  pupil  of  Dyfrig  and 
the  friend  of  David,  and,  after  sitting  as  bishop  at  Llandaff,  spent  some 
years  in  Armorica,  and  then  returning,  held  Menevia  with  Llandaff 
(see  Lib.  Landav.  p.  92).  The  third  was  Oudoceus,  said  to  have  excom- 
municated King  Mouric  for  perjury  and  murder,  in  a  synod  of  all  his 
clergy,  including  three  abbots ;  Mon.  Ang.  vi.  1223.  Such  synods  are 
repeatedly  mentioned  in  these  documents.  St.  Teilo's  shrine  remains  near 
the  sedilia  at  Llandaff. 

^  Annal.  Camb.  a.  612.  Benedict  of  Gloucester,  his  biographer,  dates 
his  death  Nov.  14,  612  ;  Wharton,  Ang.  Sac.  ii.  661.  But  the  Llandaff 
story  was  that  his  body  was  removed  to  Llandaff  in  1120,  In  Bardsey, 
or  Ynys  Enlli,  says  Giraldus,  '  ut  fertur,  infinita  sanctorum  sepulta  sunt 
corpora';  Itin.  Camb.  ii.  c.  6.  Legend  reckoned  them  as  20,000;  Liber 
Landav.  p.  2.  It  was  called  the  Rome  of  Wales  ;  ib.  p.  i  ;  cp.  Pryco, 
p.  181. 

'  See  it  in  Bp.  Jones  and  Freeman,  p.  241  ;  Rees,  Welsh  Saints,  p.  194  ; 
Pryce,  p.  129. 


Diibrichis  and  David.  37 

of  connecting  him  with  the  days  of  King  Arthur  ^ :  he  chap.  i. 
seems  to  have  taken  part  in  the  synod  of  Llanddewi, 
and  certainly  established  an  episcopal  seat  at  Kilmuine  or 
Mynyw,  better  known  as  Menevia,  that  remotest  extremity 
of  South  Wales  where  now  the  cathedral  that  bears  his 
name  presents  so  unique  and  pathetic  a  combination  of 
indefeasible  majesty  and  irreversible  decay.  He  appears 
to  have  died  in  601  ^.  The  stories  about  a  regular  Welsh 
archbishopric,  held  at  first  by  Dubricius,  and  then  trans- 
ferred by  David  to  Menevia,  are  without  foundation :  the 
W^elsh  Church  of  that  age  had  no  metropolitans  ^,  and 
the  tale  about  St.  Sampson  of  Dol  in  Brittany,  which 
represented  him  as  having  been  archbishop  at  York  *,  and 
then  at  Menevia,  is  a  myth  of  yet  later  date;  the  fact 
being  simply  that  he  was  consecrated  in  Wales,  and  thence 
proceeded  to  Armorica,  and  sat  in  a  Council  of  Paris  in 

^  In  Geoffrey's  romance  Dubricius  addresses  Arthur's  army,  crowns  him, 
resigns  the  archbishopric  of  Caerleon.  The  author  of  *  Chronicles  of  Anc. 
Brit.  Church '  makes  Dyfrig,  first,  bishop  of  Llandaff,  and  secondly, 
in  490,  archbishop  of  Caerleon  ;  p.  115.  See  too  the  uncritical  account  in 
Williams,  Antiq.  of  Cymry,  p.  130.  The  Liber  Landavensis  extends  his 
life  beyond  a  century  and  a  half.  Geoffrey  tells  how  David  succeeded 
Dubricius  at  Caerleon,  and  died  at  Menevia,  viii.  i ;  the  early  and 
fictitious  date  for  his  death  is  544.  Montalembert  in  both  cases  follows 
the  legend  ;  see  his  '  Monks  of  the  West.'  The  most  picturesque  story 
about  him  is  that  of  the  *  Evangelium  Imperfectum '  ;  that  he  was 
copying  St.  John's  Gospel,  left  his  work  on  hearing  the  church  bell, 
at  his  return  found  the  page  completed  in  gold  letters,  and  out  of 
reverence  added  nothing  to  the  copy;  Girald.  Op.  iii.  393. 

^  Annal.  Camb.  (written  some  200  years  later).  In  Giraldus  Cam- 
brensis'  Life  of  him  (Works,  iii.  403),  he  is  said  to  have  had,  when 
dying,  a  vision  of  Christ,  and  to  have  expired  saying,  '  Lord,  take  me 
up  after  Thee  !  '  A  yet  later  date  for  his  death  is  642.  He  is  said  to 
have  been  succeeded  by  Teilo  (Girald.  Itin.  Camb.  ii.  i),  or  by  Cynog, 
or  by  Ismael  (Lib.  Landav.  p.  109). 

^  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  148  ;  Bp.  Jones  and  Freeman,  p.  253.  The 
story  was  that  Teilo,  on  becoming  archbishop  of  Menevia,  transferred 
the  primacy  to  Llandaff ;  cf.  Kees,  p.  243.  See,  however,  his  remarks 
on  p.  291. 

*  Geoffrey,  vii,  3  (ix.  8),  makes  Arthur  see  with  grief  the  ruin  of  religion 
at  York,  after  the  Saxons  had  driven  out  'blessed  Sampson  the  arch- 
bishop.' The  fictitious  connexion  of  Sampson  with  York  is  ignored  by  Alb. 
Butler  (July  28) ;  nor  does  it  appear  in  the  Liber  Landavensis.  Giraldus 
makes  him  twenty-fifth  archbishop  of  St.  David's,  and  tells  the  story 
about  his  removal  of  the  pall  to  Dol;  Itin.  Camb.  ii.  i.  Cp.  Descr. 
Camb.  i.  4,  where  he  reckons  twenty-three.     (Op.  vi.  102,  170.) 


38  Flight  of  British  Bishops. 

.MAP.  I.  557  \  Setting  aside  such  fancies,  it  is  worth  while  to 
observe  how  the  situation  of  St.  David  s  illustrates  the  fact 
that  these  old  Celtic  bishops  valued  monastic  seclusion  even 
more  than  facilities  for  episcopal  administration  ^. 

One  of  Geoffrey's  statements  as  to  the  prelates  of  Teuton- 
ized  Britain  may  represent  a  modicum  of  fact.     He  says  ^ 
that  when    the   Saxons  drove  the  British  fugitives  into 
Wales  and  Cornwall,  Theon  bishop  of  London,  and  Thadioc 
of  York,  fled  into  Wales  with  the  *  archbishop '  of  Caerleon 
and  their  surviving  clergj^     This  he  dates  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  sixth  century.     But  if  London  fell  soon  after 
the  middle  of  the  century,  while  Deira  had  been  conquered 
soon  after  its  commencement,  these  prelates  can   hardly 
have  been  companions  in  flight.     However,  we  know  that 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  seventh  century  there  was  a  clear 
tradition  as  to  the  names  of  *  sacred  places  abandoned  by 
the  British  clergy '  of  the  North  country  in  general,  when 
they  '  fled  from  the  sword '  of  the  conquering  race  *.     If 
this  was  so,  when  we  think  of  what  the  Divine  mercy  was 
preparing  at  this  time  for  a  country  bereft  of  pastors  and. 
even  of  flocks,  we  may  observe  a  new  verification  of  the 
devout  proverb  that  man's  necessity  is  God's  opportunity. 
Christi-      It  did,  indeed,  seem  as  if  Heathenism  had  fairly  beaten 
ruined  in   down  Christianity  in  the  largest  portion  of  South  Britain  : 
most  of      the  East-Anglians,  and  the  settlers  in  the  Lichfield  and 
Britain.     Repton  district  who   were    called   Mercians,   as   dwelling 
near  the  Welsh  border  or  march  ^,  had  been  forming  them- 

*  Mansi,  ix.  747.     See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  149,  159. 

2  Bp.  Jones  and  Freeman,  p.  251.  Caerleon,  says  Giraldus,  was  'far 
more  fitted  for  a  metropolitan  see  than  this  angulus  remotissimus,  terra 
ftaxosa,  sterilis,  infecunda  :  it  was  of  set  purpose  that  saints  chose  such 
abodes, — much  preferring  the  eremitic  to  the  pastoral  life  ;'  Itin.  Camb. 
ii.  I.     For  Aidan's  choice  of  Lindisfarne,  see  below. 

*  Geoffrey,  viii.  2.  See  Stubbs,  Registrum  Sac.  Ang.  p.  152,  The 
t»-aditional  date  is  586.  For  the  fall  of  London,  see  Green,  Making  of 
England,  p.  no. 

*  Eddius,  Vit.  S.  Wilfridi,  17.  See  Chaucer,  'Tale  of  the  Man  of 
La  we '  : — 

*■  To  Walys  fled  the  cristianitee 
Of  olde  Britons,  dwelling  in  this  lie.' 

*  Green,  p.  15  :  see  Palgrave,  Anglo-Sax.  p.  45  ;  Freeman,  i.  26  ;  Pear- 
son, i.  106.  The  Mid-Anglians,  as  far  as  they  are  distinct  from  the 
Mercians,  dwelt  eastwards  towards  Leicester. 


IVhat  Opening  for  a  Mission  ?  39 

selves  into  regular  kingdoms :  the  West  Saxon  Ceawlin's  chap.  i. 
defeat  at  Wodensburg,  or  Wanborongh,  in  591,  soon  followed 
by  his  death,  was  indeed  the  aggrandizement  of  his  re- 
volted nephew^.  But  it  was  more.  It  opened  the  way 
to  supremacy  for  a  prince  who,  twenty-three  years  earlier, 
had  been  checked  by  Ceawlin  in  his  attempt  to  extend 
his  realm.  That  victory  on  the  Berkshire  downs  was 
momentous,  for  it  helped  Ethelbert  of  Kent,  who  had 
recently  espoused  a  Frankish  princess,  to  become  the 
overlord  of  East  Saxons  and  East  Angles.  North  of 
Humber,  indeed,  he  had  no  ascendency ;  Edwin,  the  child 
of  Ella,  had  been  dispossessed,  after  his  father's  death, 
by  the  king  of  Bernicia^,  Ethelric,  who  was  succeeded 
within  five  years  by  his  son,  a  prince  of  equal  energy,  and 
known  by  the  appellations  of  '  the  Fierce  ^ '  and  '  the 
Devastator*,'  that  Ethelfrid,  properly  ^thelfrith,  whom 
Bede  describes  as,  like  Benjamin,  a  ravening  wolf,  and 
of  whom  he  says  that  no  other  Anglian  chief  wrought 
such  havoc  among  the  race  of  Britons  ^.  Every  one  of  these 
rulers  and  nations  was  bound  by  habit  and  tradition  to 
the  old  Teutonic  Paganism  ;  it  might  even  seem  that  their 
very  successes  had  hardened  them  in  antipathy  to  the 
religion  of  the  Cross :  was  it  to  be  expected,  under  these 
conditions,  that  ministers  of  that  religion,  foreign  to 
conquerors  and  conquered  alike,  could  appeal  to  such 
a  people  and  be  heard?  Yes,  it  was  the  hope  and  the 
faith  of  the  greatest  Christian  of  that  time:  and  to  his 
action,  in  the  strength  of  such  hope  and  faith,  we  owe  the 
beginnings  of  our  English  Christianity. 

^  Sax.  Chr.  and  Florence.  Hen.  Huntingdon's  account  of  the  battle  of 
Wodensburg,  '  God  gave  the  victory  to  the  Britons,'  is  explained  by 
the  fact  that  Britons,  and  even  Scots,  v^rere  allied  with  Ceolric  i^or  Ceol) 
the  *  Hwiccian,'  against  his  uncle  Ceawlin.  See  Palgrave,  p.  404  ;  Guest's 
Orig.  Celt.  ii.  243 ;  Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  207.  Wanborough 
is  a  little  to  the  east  of  Swindon. 

"^  Florence,  Chron. 

^  Hen.  Hunt.  a.  593. 

*  *  Flesaurs,'  in  Nennius,  =  Devastator. 

*  Bede,  i.  34  ;  Palgrave,  Engl.  Comm.  p.  428. 


CHAPTER  II. 

Gregory  'GREGORY  our  f ather ^''  who  'sent  us  baptism 2;'  such 
were  the  terms  of  simple  and  grateful  affection  in  which 
the  early  English  Christians  spoke  of  that  greatest  and, 
on  the  whole,  most  lovable^  of  Koman  bishops,  whose 
pontificate  extended  from  590  to  604.  The  fatherly  title 
was  signally  appropriate  to  a  character  so  full  of  energetic 
charity.  He  who,  unlike  'other  pontiffs,'  spent  yet  more 
on  the  poor  than  on  the  building  of  churches  * ;  he  who 
once  debarred  himself  from  celebrating  the  Eucharist, 
because  a  poor  man  had  been  starved  to  death  in  a  great 
scarcity^;  he  whose  correspondence  with  distant  friends 
overflows  with  such  vivid  consciousness  of  a  oneness  which 
no  distance  could  affect^;  he  whose  thoughtful  and  dis- 
criminating sympathy  gave  directions  that   a   sick   cleric 

*  Council  of  Clovesho,  a.  d.  747  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  368. 

^  A.-S.  Chr.  a.  565.  Compare  Aldhelm,  de  Laude  Virginitatis,  55  : 
*  Gregorius  .  .  .  paedagogus  noster,  noster,  inquam,  qui  nostris  parentibus 
.  .  .  regenerantis  gratiae  normam  tradidit.' 

'  See  Robertson's  Growth  of  the  Papal  Power,  p.  115  :  *  Gregory  stands 
in  the  foremost  rank  of  Popes  who  have  contributed  to  the  exaltation  of 
their  see.  .  .  .  He  is  the  only  one  of  those  Popes  whose  memory  we  can 
regard  with  much  affection.'  Yet,  says  Hodgkin,  '  he  was  not  naturally 
a  sweet-tempered  man'  (Italy  and  her  Invaders,  v.  391);  there  was  in 
him  a  strain  of  the  old  Roman  hardness  ;  he  was  '  peremptory  and  stern 
in  discipline,'  and  could  sometimes  be  'harsh'  (Church,  Miscell.  Essays, 
p.  320),  and  often  sarcastic  in  censuring  subordinates  who  took  their 
duties  too  easily  (e.  g.  Epist.  i.  44).  It  is  the  more  to  his  credit  that  he 
reproached  himself  *  non  leviter  *  for  being  severe  to  a  monk  *  non  pro 
gravi  culpa'  (Ep.  ii.  32). 

*  Paul  the  Deacon's  Life  of  Greg.  c.  16. 

*  John  the  Deacon's  Life  of  Greg.  ii.  29.  Paul  wrote  at  the  close  of  the 
eighth  century :  John  a  century  still  later.     See  Gibbon,  v.  362. 

*  Greg.  Ep.  i.  66  ;  iii.  48,  54  ;  vi.  60  ;  viii.  2 ;  xii.  i. 


The  Church  and  Slavery.  41 

was  not  to  lose  his  stipend  ^  forbade  a  prelate  in  bad  chap.  n. 
health  to  keep  fast  or  vigil  2,  remitted  the  Church's  claim 
on  the  property  of  three  orphans  ^  and  provided  bedding 
for  the  pilgrims  of  Mount  Sinai  ^,  and  a  yearly  allowance 
of  wheat  and  beans  for  a  man  with  bad  eyesight^, — was 
just  the  man  to  unite  this  natural  and  genial  kindness 
with  that  Christian  love  for  souls,  so  fervent  as  an  emotion 
and  so  vigorous  as  a  motive,  which  betokens  and  crowns 
the  genuine  pastor. 

We  all  know  the  immortal  story  of  the  origin  of  his  Story 
interest  in  our  heathen  ancestors,  and  therefore  of  that  English 
work  which  he  did  for  England,  and  which  made  Bede  say  ^^^y^- 
with  such  loving  emphasis,  '  Though  he  be  not  an  apostle 
to  others,  yet  he  is  to  us,  for  the  seal  of  his  apostleship 
are  we  in  the  Lord^.'      It   was  probably  just  before  he 
went  in  578  as   the  Pope's   confidential   agent  ^   to  Con- 
stantinople, or  else  after  his  return  in  585  ^,  that  Gregory, 
then  a  deacon,  passing  through  the  Roman  Forum,  amid 
the  din  of  its  multifarious  traffic,  saw  some  ^  boys  exposed 
for  sale.     The  slave-trade  was  rife  at  this  time,  and  indeed 
long  afterwards:  the  spirit  of  that  creed  which  acknow- 
ledged all  to  be  one  in  God  and  in  Christ  had  not  yet 

^  Ep.  ii.  8. 

•^  Ep.  xi.  33.     Gregory  offered  to  tend  him  personally. 
•'  Ep.  iii.  21.     Compare  a  remission  of  money  due  from  an  old  man,  if 
found  to  be  poor,  Ep.  xii.  9. 

*  Ep.  xi.  I.  *  Ep.  i.  67. 

*  Bede,  ii.  i.  So  in  the  coronation  office  of  King  Ethelred :  '  Sanctae 
Mariae,  ac  beati  Petri  apostolorum  principis,  Sanctique  Gregorii  Anglorum 
apostoli  .  .  .  meritis.'     Maskell,  Mon.  Kit.  ii.  36. 

■^  '  Apocrisiarius.*  Benedict  I  was  Pope  574-578,  Pelagius  II  578-590. 
Gregory  was  at  Constantinople  from  578  to  585,  under  Pelagius. 

^  Paul,  c.  19,  gives  the  later  date;  'apostolico  Pelagio.'  John,  i.  22, 
gives  the  earlier  ;  '  ad  Benedictum.*  So  does  the  earlier  Life,  by  a  monk 
of  Whitby,  edited  by  Ewald  fiom  a  MS  at  St.  Gallen,  Eng.  Hist.  Review, 
iii.  301  ;  Plummer's  Bede,  ii.  389.  So  the  Benedictine  biographers,  b.  i.  4, 
5  ;  and  they  are  followed  by  Dr.  Hodgkin  (v.  291).  Gregory  became  a 
monk  cir.  575,  deacon  in  577,  abbot  in  585,  Pope  on  Sept.  3,  590,  not  591, 
as  Bede  implies  (i.  23).  Gregory's  predecessor,  Pelagius  II,  died  Feb.  8, 
590,  and  the  day  of  his  own  accession  was  Sept.  3,  which  fell  on  a  Sunday 
in  590.  For  the  year  590  see  the  Benedictine  Life,  L'Art  de  Verifier, 
iii.  277,  &c.     It  is  adopted  by  modern  writers. 

*  Thorn  says  ihree^  but  an  indefinite  number  easily  becomes  a  triad. 


42  The  Church  and  Slavery, 

^HAp.  II.  undermined  the  inveterate  usage  which  treated  human 
beings  as  capable,  under  certain  circumstances,  of  becoming 
lawful  property :  canons  of  councils  had  freely  owned  the 
right  of  Christian  laymen,  even  of  clergy  or  monks,  to 
possess  bondsmen^:  to  emancipate  one's  slave  was  an  act 
of  beneficence,  but  beyond  that  point  Church  teaching 
did  not  go.  Gregory  was  among  those  Church  teachers 
who  did  much  to  abate  the  evils  of  slavery,  and  in  that 
sense  to  prepare  for  its  extinction  ^ :  he,  as  Pope,  sold  sacred 
vessels  to  ransom  captives  ^,  and  in  an  act  of  manumission 
declared  that,  '  since  the  Redeemer  had  become  incarnate 
to  set  men  free,  it  was  a  good  thing  to  restore  to  their 
natural  freedom  those  whom  the  law  of  nations  had 
deprived  of  it  *.'  Let  us  try  to  picture  him,  with  his  ruddy 
face,  scanty  darkish  hair,  high  brow,  and  tapering  hands  ^, 
as  he  stands  still,  attracted  by  the  sad  sight  of  those 
helpless  lads,  whose  white  skin^  and  golden  hair  were 
proof  enough  of  their  Northern  parentage,  and  were 
associated  with  a  beauty  of  face  which  their  unhappy 
condition  would  make  all  the  more  touching.  He  who, 
in  after-years,  used  to  take  pains  with  the  teaching  of  his 
3^oung  choristers  '^,  was  moved  to  the  very  soul  with  pity 

^  E.  g.  Council  of  Agde,  c.  7,  56  ;  first  of  Orleans,  c.  3.  Comp.  Greg.  Ep. 
iii.  I  ;  V.  34. 

^  See  Milman,  Lat.  Chr.  ii.  47,  52  ;  Hist.  Jews,  iii.  48.  On  the  three 
ways  in  which  Christianity  acted  in  this  direction,  see  Lecky,  Europ. 
Morals,  ii.  70. 

"  See  Ep.  vii.  13,  38.  Compare  St.  Ambrose,  de  Offic.  Ministr.  ii.  28, 
and  Acacius  in  Soc.  vii.  21.     See  Bingham,  v.  6.  6. 

*  Ep.  vi.  12.  Comp.  Greg.  Reg.  Pastoral,  iii.  5  :  masters  are  to  be 
admonished  *  ut  naturae  suae,  qua  aequaliter  sunt  cum  servis  conditi, 
raemoriam  non  amittant.'  See  the  expressions  of  Old-English  feeling  on 
this  point  in  Pref.  to  Chron.  of  Abingdon,  vol.  ii.  p.  Iii. 

*  John  the  Deacon's  Life  of  Greg.  iv.  84.  From  Ep.  xi.  44  he  would 
seem  to  have  been  stout,  until  the  gout  brought  him  low.  See  Barmby's 
Gregory  the  Great,  p.  142. 

^  Paul,  17:  'Lactei  corporis,  ac  venusti  vultus,  capillos  praecipui 
candoris,' — shining  sunny  hair.  John,  i.  21  :  'corpore  candidos,  forma 
pulcherrimos,  vultu  venustos,  capillorum  quoque  nitore  perspicuos.' 
Bede,  earlier  than  both,  has,  '  candidi  corporis  et  venusti  vultus, 
capillorum  quoque  forma  egregia  ; '  ii.  i.  The  St.  Gallen  Life,  apparently 
earliest  of  all,  'forma  et  crinibus  candidati  albis.' 

'  Joan.  Diac,  ii.  6. 


Gregory  and  the  English  Boys.  43 

for  the  slave-boys,  and  asked  from  what  country  they  chap.  ir. 
came.  The  slave-owner — probably  a  Jew  ^ — answered, 
'  From  Britain :  the  people  there  have  these  fair  com- 
plexions.' Then  came  the  question,  as  from  Gregory's  full 
heart,  '  Are  they  heathens  or  Christians  ^  ? '  '  Heathens.' 
He  sighed,  as  a  servant  of  Christ  might  well  sigh :  '  Alas ! 
that  such  bright  faces  should  be  in  the  power  of  the  prince 
of  darkness — that  with  outward  forms  so  lovely,  the  mind 
within  should  be  sick  ^  and  empty  of  grace !  How  do  you 
call  their  nation  1 '  '  Angles.'  Then,  with  that  fondness 
for  playing  on  the  sound  of  a  name,  with  a  serious  thought 
under  the  playfulness  ^,  which  we  see  in  Eusebius '',  and 
also  in  Bede  himself  ^,  he  replied,  *  'Tis  well, — they  have 
Angels'  faces;  it  were  meet  they  should  be  fellow-heirs 
with  Angels  in  heaven.  What  is  their  native  province  % ' 
'  Deira ; '  we  might  translate,  Yorkshire, — for  the  southern 
of  the  two  Northumbrian  realms  may  for  practical  purposes 
be  identified  with  the  land  between  the  Tees  and  Humber : 
and  Gregory's  ear,  catching  its  name,  suggested  the  comment, 
'They  must  be  rescued  de  ira  Dei.'  One  more  question: 
who  was  their  king?  'Aella^.'  'Alleluia,  praise  to  God 
the  Maker,  ought  to  be  sung  in  those  parts.'  He  passed 
on,  and  saw  the  boys  no  more  ;  but  the  thought  of  their 

^  Milman,  Hist.  Jews,  iii.  48.  Cp.  Greg.  Ep.  ix.  36,  that  Jews  bought 
Christian  slaves  from  Gaul,  and  a  Jew  explained  to  him  that  the  magis- 
trates ordered  them  to  buy  slaves.  In  Ep.  ix.  no  he  exhorts  Frank  kings 
not  to  permit  Jews  to  keep  Christian  slaves.  In  Ep.  iii.  38  he  exhorts 
a  prefect  to  set  free  Christian  slaves  bought  by  a  'very  wicked '  Jew. 

^  Ethelwerd,  in  his  Chronicle,  ii.  i,  gives  a  corrupt  version  of  this 
colloquy,  making  Gregory  address  the  young  Angles,  who  answer  that  no 
one  has  opened  their  ears  to  Christianity. 

^  Paul.  Diac.  has  'aegram,'  which  Bede  omits. 

*  'Rhetorice  ethimologizans,'  Thorn,  in  X  Script.  1757. 

^  Euseb.  V.  24,  Irenaeus  ;  vi.  41,  Macar  ;  vii.  10,  Macrianvs  ;  vii.  31,  Mmies. 
Two  of  these  passages  are  quotations. 

®  Bede,  ii.  15,  Fdix.  So  in  his  Life  of  St.  Felix  of  Nola,  c.  i :  '  nominis 
sui  mysterium  factis  exsequens.*  So  iii.  2  on  '  Hefenhelth  *  :  'caelestis 
campus,  quod  certo  ubique  praesagio,'  &c.  So  Columban  in  his  letter  to 
Gregory,  '  Tua  Vigilantia  ; '  Greg.  Ep.  ix.  127.  So  Columba  on  Libranus, 
Adamnan,  ii.  39 ;  and  St.  Augustine  on  Pelagius  in  De  Grat.  Chr.  45  ; 
and  St.  Athanasius  on  Hosius  in  Hist.  Ari.  49. 

^  Ella  died  in  588.  He  appears  as  *  Alia '  in  Chaucer's  '  Man  of  Lawe's 
Tale.' 


44  Gregory  becomes  Pope, 

CHAP.  II.  nation's  spiritual  need  impelled  him  to  wring  from  the 
Pope — probably  Benedict  I — a  permission  to  go  and  preach 
to  the  Angles.  But  this  was  not  to  be :  the  Romans  beset 
the  Pope  with  outcries,  demanding  the  recall  of  Gregory  ^ ; 
and  Gregory  was  recalled,  and  obeyed.  Some  years — 
perhaps  thirteen — elapsed,  and  he  himself  occupied  the  see, 
being  then  just  fifty  years  old  '^.  He  was  at  once  immersed 
in  business  of  all  kinds ;  troubles  caused  by  Donatism  in 
Africa,  a  schism  in  Istria  on  the  question  of  the  Three 
Articles^,'  heresy  vexing  Eastern  Christendom,  practical 
corruptions  tainting  the  Gallic  Church,  pestilence  in  Rome, 
Lombards  even  encamping  before  its  walls,  vexations  con- 
nected with  the  see  of  Ravenna  and  other  churches,  a 
dispute  with  the  Emperor  Maurice  *,  a  more  famous 
controversy  with  John  bishop  of  Constantinople  as  to  the 
title  of  Oecumenical  Patriarch ;  he  had  also  literary  work, 
the  composition  of  his  'Pastoral  Rule^,'  the  compilation 
of  his  Sacramentary,  and  other  such  designs  to  be  carried 
out,  beside  his  preaching  and  other  episcopal  duties.  Yet 
we  may  well  believe  that  he  never  lost  the  remembrance 
of  those  '  bright  faces '  of  the  Yorkshire  lads  in  the  slave- 
market  :  and  at  last,  in  596,  he  took  some  steps  towards  an 
English  mission  by  ordering  the  steward  of  his  church's 
estates  in  Gaul  to  spend  some  of  their  proceeds  in  pur- 
chasing boys  of  seventeen  or  eighteen,  of  English  birth, 
that  they  might  receive  a  Christian  education^.  But 
immediately  afterwards  he  resolved  on  more  direct 
action.     He  had  founded  in  575  a  monastery,  dedicated  to 

*  John  puts  their  outcry  into  a  jingle  :  *  Petrum  offendisti,  Eomam 
destruxisti,  quia  Gregorium  dimisisti ' ;  i.  23,  abridged  from  Paul. 

2  He  was  probably  born  in  540 ;  Bened.  Life,  i.  1.6;  Barmby,  p.  29. 

3  Many  Westerns  feared  that,  by  accepting  the  decree  of  the  recent 
*  Fifth  Council '  in  regard  to  Theodore,  Theodoret,  and  Ibas,  they  would  be 
condemning  the  Fourth  Council  and  the  '  tome '  of'St.  Leo. 

*  There  is  no  palliating  his  deplorable  exultation  at  the  accession  of 
Maurice's  murderer,  Phocas  :  yet  Maurice,  who  '  often  did  the  right  things 
in  the  wrong  way'  (Hodgkin,  Italy  and  her  Invaders,  v.  434),  had  given 
him  some  cause  for  irritation. 

*  On  this  famous  manual,  see  Licinianus'  letter  to  Gregory  ;  Ep.  ii.  54. 

*  Ep.  vi.  7,  to  Candidus.  Cp.  Hardwick,  Ch.  Hist.  M.  Ages,  p.  11 1,  on 
a  similar  scheme  as  carried  out  by  St.  Anskar. 


His  Plans  for  an  English  Mission.       45 

St.  Andrew,  on  his  own  estate  on  the  Coelian  hill,  and  chap.  u. 
had  lived  there  as  monk  and  as  abbot  ^.  He  retained  a 
special  interest  in  this  long-loved  home,  within  whose 
precincts  he  had  been  so  happy,  but  had  also,  we  must 
confess  it,  on  one  occasion  shown  towards  a  monk  who  had 
broken  the  rule  a  relentless  severity,  the  effect  of  monastic 
rigorism  prevailing  over  his  natural  kindness  of  heart  ^. 
In  a  monastery  the  officer  next  to  the  abbot  was  called 
the  ' praepositus '  or  provosts  Gregory  in  one  passage 
says  that  an  abbot's  negligence  must  be  remedied  by 
means  of  a  vigilant '  praepositus  ^  ':  we  hear  of  one  Pretiosus 
as  his  '  praepositus '  at  the  time  just  referred  to  ^ :  and  at 
the  period  which  we  have  reached  the  office  was  held  by 
Augustine,  who  had  once  been  a  pupil  of  Felix  bishop  of 
Messana  ^.  Gregory  selected  him  ^,  and  several  others  of  Mission  of 
the  house,  to  undertake  a  mission  to  the  English.  Probably,  and  his 
with  his  '  wonderful  capacity  for  business,  his  wide,  various,  ^ompan- 

*  John  the  Deacon,  i.  6.  The  site,  described  as  'ad  clivum  Scauri,'  is 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  in  Rome,  in  full  view  of  the  Palatine  and  the 
Aventine.  An  inscription  in  the  vestibule  mentions  Augustine  and  his 
first  successors  in  the  see  of  Canterbury  as  among  those  who  'ex  hoc 
monasterio  prodierunt.*  The  present  church  is  modern,  but  its  southern 
chapel  represents  the  place  where  Gregory  was  wont  to  *•  refresh  his 
wearied  limbs  with  moderate  rest,'  and  contains  his  marble  chair.  Near 
the  spot  was  a  public  library,  founded  by  Pope  Agapetus  in  a  house  of 
his  own  :  Lanciani,  Ancient  Rome,  p.  190,  and  his  Pagan  and  Christian 
Rome,  p.  229.  Gregory  in  Ep.  viii.  11  confirms  an  agreement  between 
Candidus,  abbot  of  St.  Andrew's,  and  the  '  magister  militiae.' 

^  Dial.  iv.  55,  Milman,  Lat.  Chr.  ii.  104,  gives  the  story  as  the  most 
signal  case  of  such  austerity,  or  rather  pitiless  harshness,  on  the  part  of 
Gregory.     Yet  see  Barmby,  p.  38. 

^  So  in  Benedict.  Reg.  65.  *  Praepositi '  appear  in  the  Life  of  St. 
Columba,  Adamn.  i.  30,  31.  In  Columban's  Rule,  c.  10,  penance  is 
assigned  to  a  monk  who  says  to  the  *  praepositus,*  '  Tu  non  judicabis 
causam  meam,  sed  noster  abbas,'  &c.  Boisil  was  '  praepositus '  at  Melrose 
under  Eata  as  abbot ;  Bede,  iv.  27,  v.  9,  and  Cuthbert  at  Lindisfarne, 
Vit.  Cuthb.  16.     The  word  'prior'  would  best  express  'praepositus.' 

*  Ep.  V.  6.     Cp.  Dial.  i.  2,  7. 
'  John,  1.  c. 

*  See  Greg.  Ep.  xiv.  17,  'alumno  tuo.'     Felix  calls  him  '  consodalis.' 

'  Augustine  was  afterwards  (by  Leo  III)  described  as  holding  the 
office  of  syncellus,  or  companion  in  the  cell  or  private  room,  to  Gregory ; 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  539  ;  and  cp.  can.  22  and  23  of  fourth  Council 
of  Toledo,  Mansi,  x.  626.  See  Fleury,  b.  25,  c.  5  (Oxford  ed.  vol.  iii. 
p.  13). 


46  Ethelbert  and  Bertha, 

CHAP.  II.  and  minute  supervision  ^/  which  seemed  to  sweep  the 
whole  area  of  Christendom,  from  the  internal  troubles  of 
African  Churches  to  a  local  feud  in  Jerusalem  and  the 
grievances  of  a  priest  of  Lycaonia  ^,  and  Avhich  caused  one 
of  his  biographers  to  call  him  an  '  Argus  full  of  eyes  ^/  he 
had  procured  information  as  to  the  state  of  the  English 
which  showed  that  the  native  district  of  the  '  angel-faced ' 

state  of  boys  was  no  promising  mission-field  while  Ethelfrid  ruled 
over  it,  and  on  the  other  hand  that  the  part  of  Britain 
most  accessible  from  the  continent  was  precisely  that  which 
seemed  to  offer  an  '  open  door/  For  Ethelbert,  properly 
iEthelberht  *,  king  of  the  Jutish  realm  of  Kent,  who  now, 
after  thirty  years  of  royalty,  stood  pre-eminent  ^  among  the 
South-Humbrian  princes,  might  be  supposed  likely  to  give 
a  favourable  hearing  to  preachers  of  the  religion  professed 
by  his  wife.  Bertha,  daughter  of  a  former  Frankish  king, 
Charibert  of  Paris,  had  been  long  before  espoused  by  Ethel- 
bert on  the  express  condition  that  she  should  be  free  to 
worship  as  a  Christian,  under  the  guidance  of  a  Frankish 
bishop,  Liudhard^.  This  condition  had  been  observed: 
Liudhard  resided  in  Kent,  and  while  '  Bertha  had  made  no 
attempt  to  convert '  her  Pagan  husband  '^ ,  he  had  never 
disturbed  his  wife  in  regard  to  her  Christian  duties.  This, 
probably,  the  Pope  had  learned ;  and  he  himself  declares 

^  Robertson,  ii,  371;  cp.  Milman,  Lat.  Chr.  ii.  112;  Hodgkin,  Italy 
and  her  Invaders,  v.  310.  In  estimating  these  qualities,  it  must  be 
remembered  that  he  had  been  prefect  of  the  city.  Church  dwells  on 
the  minuteness  of  his  directions  for  the  benefit  of  the  church  tenants 
(Miscell.  Essays,  p.  232). 

^  Ep.  i.  77  ;  vii.  32  ;  vi.  66. 

^  John  the  Deacon,  ii.  55. 

*  Or  ^thelbriht,  Chron.  Albert,  as  Dean  Stanley  observes  (Mem.  Cant. 
p.  31),  is  but  Ethelbert  (  =  Adalbert)  abbreviated. 

'  Bede,  ii.  5.  On  the  leadership  or  primacy  which  has  been  associated 
•with  the  title  of  Bretwalda,  cp.  the  somewhat  differing  views  in  Kemble, 
Sax.  in  Engl.  ii.  ir,  Freeman,  i.  548,  and  Green,  Making  of  England, 
p.  307  ;  and  see  Stubbs,  Constit.  Hist.  i.  190 ;  Rhys,  Celt.  Brit.  p.  136. 

®  *Quam  ea  conditione  a  parentibus  acceperat,'  &c  ;  Bede,  i.  25.  See 
Greg.  Turon.  Hist.  Fr.  iv.  26,  '  filiam  quae  postea  in  Cantiam,  virum 
accipiens,  est  deducta.'  Charibert  (or  Haribert)  was  son  of  Chlotair  I 
(Carlyle's  'wild  Clotaire')  and  grandson  of  Clovis.  He  reigned  from  561 
to  567.     Gregory  of  Tours  gives  him  a  bad  character. 

'  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  23.     Perhaps  she  had  tried  and  failed. 


sionarieH. 


Augustine  and  his  Companions,  47 

that  he  had  been  informed  of  a  desire  on  the  part  of  the  chap.  h. 
English  for  Christian  instruction,  and  reprobates  the 
neglect  of  the  Gallic  bishops  to  impart  it^.  He  could, 
indeed,  have  had  but  an  imperfect  idea  of  the  complexities 
of  the  political  condition  of  Britain,  or  of  the  difficulties 
which  it  would  offer  to  a  missionary :  yet  had  he  known 
more,  he  would  still  have  acted  in  faith,  and  sent  forth  his 
agents  in  the  all -sustaining  Name. 

And  so,  apparently  in  the  spring  of  596,  they  went  Misgivings 
forth,  obedient  and  hopeful,  and  '  got  through  some  small  ^ 
part  of  their  journey.'  So  Bede  tells  us^;  in  fact,  they 
had  reached  Provence,  and  probably  rested  in  that  illustrious 
monastery  which  for  nearly  two  centuries  had  made  the 
name  of  the  isle  of  Lerins^  sacred  and  venerable  to  all  who 
had  heard  of  its  discipline  and  its  devotion,  and  of  the  light 
of  sacred  learning  there  kept  alive  in  a  country  dark  with 
spreading  ignorance,  and  darker  yet  with  stormy  crime. 
Stephen  abbot  of  Lerins,  as  well  as  Protasius  bishop  of  Aix 
and  the  '  patrician '  or  provincial  governor*  Arigius,  wel- 
comed the  strangers  heartily.  But  they  also  heard  more 
than  they  had  dreamt  of  as  to  the  hard  fierce  nature  of  the 
Saxons,  and  began  to  realize  the  obstacle  involved  in  their 
ignorance  of  the  Saxon  tongue^.     With  somewhat  of  the 

*  Greg.  Ep.  vi.  58,  59. 
^  Bede,  i.  23.    He  dates  their  journey  in  the  fourteenth  year  of  Maurice, 

which  began  August  13,  595.  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  3,  Robertson,  ii. 
387,  and  Moberly  (on  Bede,  1.  c.)  think  that  they  set  out  in  595.  But 
Gregory's  letter  sent  back  with  Augustine  is  dated  on  July  23  in  that 
fourteenth  year  ;  i.  e.  in  596.  It  is  not  likely  that  the  voyage  to  Provence, 
a  short  sojourn  there,  and  Augustine's  return  voyage,  would  occupy  more 
time  than  between  the  early  spring  and  the  middle  of  July  of  that  year. 
The  Benedictines  date  the  first  journey  in  596  :  so  does  Smith,  on  Bede, 
1.  c.  :    so  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  21. 

^  See  Tillemont,  xii.  473  ;  Fleury,  b.  24,  c.  58  ;  Sirmond.  Op.  i.  1029. 
*  From  the  isle  of  Lerins  came  forth  the  greatest  saints  and  scholars  of 
the  time;*  Kitchin,  Hist.  France,  i.  65.  The  'Quicunque'  has  recently 
been  again  attributed  to  some  one  of  the  theologians  of  Lerins  (Burn  on 
Athan.  Creed,  in  Studia  Sacra,  iv.  p.  xcvi). 

*  See  Greg.  Op.  ii.  493,  and  Kitchin,  i.  85.  On  the  Constantinian  use  of 
the  title,  see  Gibbon,  ii.  309.  It  had  been  borne  by  Ricimer  the  'Em- 
peror-maker.' Clovis  began  his  victories  by  defeating  the  *  patrician  ' 
Syagrius  of  Soissons.    Gregory  thanks  Arigius  for  his  kindness,  Ep.  vi.  57. 

^  Life  of  St.  Augustine  (Lives  of  Engl.  Saints),  p.  74. 


48  Misgivings  silenced  by  Gregory. 

CHAP.  II.  weakness  shown  by  St.  Mark  after  he  landed  in  Pamphylia\ 
they  began  to  think  they  had  undertaken  more  than  they 
could  compass,  and,  doubtless,  to  long  for  the  hallowed 
quiet  of  their  old  home  on  the  Coelian.  '  Struck  with 
a  sluggish  timorousness,'  so  Bede  phrases  it,  '  they  thought 
of  returning  home,  and  after  taking  counsel  together, 
determined  that  this  was  the  safer  course  2.'  But  as  Fuller 
fairly  remarks,  their  shrinking  was  not  unnatural,  al- 
though it  is  '  facile  '  to  call  them  cowards^ ;  and  a  modern 
historian  of  the  Saxons  fully  recognizes  the  extreme 
onerousness  of  their  task*.  'No  sooner  said  than  done,' 
Bede  continues :  '  they  send  back  Augustine,  who  accord- 
ing to  Gregory's  plan  was  to  be  ordained  their  bishop  if 
they  should  be  welcomed  by  the  English,  and  commission 
him  to  induce  Gregory  by  humble  supplication  to  excuse 
them  from  a  journey  so  full  of  perils,  of  toils,  of  un- 
certainties.' 
Gregory  They  might,  one  would  think,  have  known  Gregory 
urges  better.  When  Augustine  reached  Rome,  and  presented 
proceed,  their  request  to  the  Pope,  it  was  refused:  Gregory,  on 
July  23,  596,  sent  a  letter  to  them  by  Augustine^  to  this 
purpose : — '  It  were  better  not  to  begin  a  good  work  than 

^  Acts  xiii.  13. 

'  Bede,  i.  23. 

^  Fuller,  Ch.  Hist.  ii.  52  :  a  passage  full  of  charming  irony. 

*  Kemble,  ii.  357.  He  calls  the  mission-journey  of  Augustine  and  his, 
companions  '  heroic'  If  this  phrase  is  too  strong,  Haddan's  representatioA 
of  their  fears  as  groundless  is  far  from  fair  (Remains,  p.  305).  Gocelin, 
in  order  to  save  St.  Augustine's  honour,  assumes  that  he  *  was  not  able  to 
resist'  their  urgency ;  Vit.  Maj.  Aug.  c.  i.  s.  6  (cir.  1080). 

^  Ep.  vi.  51  ;  Bede,  1.  c.  Here  we  may  remark  on  the  reckoning  by 
*  indictions,'  which  appears  in  this  and  other  papal  letters  given  by  Bede» 
Early  in  the  fourth  century  arose  the  custom  of  arranging  years  in  periods 
of  fifteen,  in  accordance  with  the  rule  that  property  should  be  revalued 
after  such  periods  :  each  year  in  such  a  series  was  reckoned  as  'indictiou 
I,  2,'  &c.  The  oldest  or  '  Constantinopolitan '  scheme  took  Sept.  i  for  itg 
starting-point.  Gregory  was  the  first  pope  who  reckoned  by  indictions, 
and  he  employed  the  Constantinopolitan  (Bened.  Edd.  in  Ep.  i.  i).  Cf. 
Nicolas,  Chron.  Hist.  p.  6  ;  Diet.  Chr.  Ant.  i.  832.  Thus  the  Benedictines 
assign  b.  i  of  the  Gregorian  letters  to  the  9th  year  of  an  indiction  (abbre- 
viated into  9th  indiction),  b.  2  to  the  loth,  and  so  on,  until  b.  8  begins 
another  indiction,  and  the  concluding  b.  14  belongs  to  its  7th  year.  On 
the  rearrangement  of  the  order  of  the  letters,  see  Hodgkin,  v.  333  ff. 


Misgivings  silenced  by  Gregory,  49 

to  begin  it  and  turn  back  from  it^ :  you  have  undertaken  chap.  n. 
this  work  by  the  Lord's  help, — carry  it  out  with  activity 
and  fervour,  knowing  that  much  labour  wins  all  the 
greater  reward.'  It  is  beautiful  to  see  the  wise  gentleness  ^ 
with  which  he  treats  his  '  dearest  sons ' :  an  inferior  man 
would  have  vented  his  annoyance  in  harsh  rebukes,  which 
would  have  by  no  means  '  upheld  the  feeble  knees,' — but 
Gregory  knew  better.  There  is  something  Pauline  in  the 
delicacy  with  which  he  hopes  that  '  in  the  eternal  Country 
he  may  see  the  fruit  of  their  labour  and  share  in  the 
reward,  as  he  had  wished  to  share  the  work.'  Other 
evidence  of  his  tact  is  given  by  his  appointment  of 
Augustine  to  be  their  abbot ;  no  longer  a  mere  prior,  but 
the  father  and  director,  who  would  be  able  in  future, 
authoritatively  and  on  the  spot,  to  repress  any  deliberation 
or  common  action  such  as  had  '  sent  him  back '  to  Rome. 
Gregory  also  wrote,  at  the  same  time,  letters  in  behalf 
of  the  missionaries  to  the  bishops  of  Tours  ^,  Marseilles, 
Aries,  Vienne,  Autun,  Aix,  and  to  abbot  Stephen,  who  had 
sent  to  him,  by  Augustine,  certain  *  spoons  and  round 
dishes  * '  for  the  use  of  poor  folks  in  Rome.  The  letter  to 
Etherius  of  Lyons  is  given  by  Bede,  but  with  a  mistaken 
address,  Aries  being  put  for  Lyons.  The  Pope  also  com-  State  of 
mended  the  monks  to  Theoderic  II  and  Theodebert  II,  the  ^^  ' 
boy-kings  of  Burgundy  and  Austrasia  ^,  and  to  their  grand- 
mother, the  widow  of  the  Austrasian  Sigebert  I,  famous  in 

^  See  Greg.  Reg.  Past.  iii.  34  ;  it  were  more  tolerable  *  recti  viam  non 
arripere,  quam  aiTepta  post  tergum  redire.' 

2  Yet  Pearson  says  that  he  wrote  '  sternly/  Hist.  Engl.  i.  122  ;  and  Hook, 
while  blaming  Augustine,  says  that  Gregory  '  was  unable  even  to  under- 
stand his  feelings/  Archbishops,  i.  51.  Gocelin  remarks  beautifully  that 
the  timorous  request  'might  have  troubled  the  high-souled  Gregory's 
charity,  as  if  his  undertaking  were  frustrated — nisi  speraret  in  nomine 
Domini,  in  quo  sua  coepta  credebat  feliciter  perfici.' 

^  See  Ep.  vi.  52-56. 

*  'Cochleares  et  circulos/  Ep.  vi.  56.  This  reminds  us  of  the  old  chari- 
ties of  the  Roman  Church  administered  by  St.  Laurence. 

'  Ep.  vi.  58.  They  were  the  sons  of  Childebert,  under  whom  the  two 
realms  had  been  united.  For  Burgundy  see  Kitchin,  Hist.  Fr.  i.  59,  71, 
84  :  Church,  Beginning  of  M.  Ages,  p.  18.  '  It  was  in  fact  the  kingdom 
of  the  Rhone,*  Hodgkin,  v,  200,  For  Austrasia,  Oster-rik,  the  Eastern 
realm,  see  Kitchin,  i.  72,  81,  84 ;  Guizot,  Hist.  Fr.  c.  8.     Hodgkin,  v.  aoa. 

E 


50  His  Commendatory  Letters. 

CHAP.  II.  early  French  history  alike  for  royal  energy  and  tyrannous 
vindictiveness  under  the  name  of  Queen  Brunehaut,  pro- 
perly Brunichild  ^  We  must  pause  here  a  moment ;  for 
Gregory's  confidential  letters  to  this  princess,  whom  he 
once  praises  for  bringing  up  her  son  well,  and  in  other 
letters  exhorts  to  suppress  ecclesiastical  abuses  ^  have 
formed  a  difficulty  somewhat  analogous  to  his  repulsive 
laudation  of  the  odious  tyrant  Phocas  ^.  But  Brunichild's 
worst  deeds,  the  result  of  pride  and  power,  were  done  at 
a  later  time  *  :  and  her  vigorous  zeal  for  Roman  organiza- 
tion^ as  against  barbaric  licence,  the  capacity  which  she 
had  shown  for  wise  and  beneficent  government,  and  also 
her  munificence  to  the  Church,  might  well  win  the  esteem 
of  the  great  pontiff  who  had  once  himself  been  Prefect  of 
Rome. 

'Strengthened^ '  by  these  and  similar  letters,  Augustine 
resumed  his  undertaking,  and  helped  his  companions  to 
nerve  their  wills  to  the  great  task.  They  travelled  by 
Marseilles  to  Aix,  Aries,  Vienne,  Lyons,  to  the  Burgundian 
court  at  Chalon'^,  and  thence  to  Autun.  The  journey 
would  be  rich  in  elevating  and  inspiriting  remembrances, 
especially  when  it  brought  them  to  the  scene  of  the 
martyrdom  of  Pothinus  and  of  the  labours  of  Irenaeus. 
Thence,  in  the  advancing  autumn,  they  proceeded  to  Reims, 
the  capital  of  Austrasia ;  visited  Tours,  where  its  historian 
bishop  had  died  in  the  year  preceding ;  and,  as  we  infer 

^  Ep.  vi.  59.  Fredegarius  speaks  of  the  evils  and  bloodshed  '  a  Bruni- 
childis  consilio  in  Francia  facta,'  Hist.  Fr.  Epit.  59.  He  calls  her  a  second 
Jezebel,  Chron.  36.  But  see  Ruinart's  note  to  his  Chron.  42.  On  Brunichild 
see  Kitchin,  i.  89,  and  Oman,  'Europe  476-918,'  p.  175  ;  and  on  Gregory's 
complimentaiy  language  to  her,  Barmby's  Gregory  the  Great,  p.  109. 
Hodgkin,  v.  452  ;  cf.  ib.  345. 

*  Ep.  vi.  5  ;   ix.  II,  109  ;   xi.  63,  69  ;   xiii.  6. 
3  Ep.  xiii.  31. 

*  The  murder  of  Chilperic  in  584  is  ascribed  to  her  by  Fredegarius,  Hist. 
Fr.  Epit.  93,  but  by  others  to  Fredegond.  It  was  in  607  that  she  procured 
the  murder  of  St.  Desiderius  of  Vienne  ;  in  612  she  put  to  death  Theode- 
bert.     Her  own  terrible  death  took  place  by  Chlotair's  order  in  613. 

^  Guizot,  Hist.  France,  c.  8 ;    Kitchin,  i.  89. 

*  *  Roboratus,'  Bede,  i,  25. 

'  Chalon  on  the  Saone,  the  residence  of  Theoderic  of  Burgundy.  See 
Smith's  Bede,  p.  680. 


The  Missionaries  in  Gaul.  51 

from  a  later  letter  of  Gregory^,  were  well  received  at  chap.  h. 
Paris  by  the  ruler  of  Neustria.  That  ruler  was  no  other 
than  the  atrocious  Fredegond,  then  acting  as  regent  for  her 
son  Chlotair  II,  and  drawing  near  to  the  outwardly  tranquil 
conclusion  of  a  life  which  had  been  '  a  calendar  of  crimes^.' 
The  missionaries  wintered  in  GauP;  and  soon  after 
Easter — which  fell  in  597  on  April  14 — they  crossed  the 
Channel ;  and  thus,  after  all  these  preliminary  experiences, 
came  face  to  face  with  their  real  work. 

Where  did  they  land  %  we  ask.  The  answer  is  ready.  Landing 
About  four  miles  westward  from  Ramsgate,  towards  the  tine.^*^ 
corner  of  Pegwell  Bay,  a  white  comer-house  on  the  road, 
standing  far  within  the  old  line  of  the  coast,  retains  the 
name  of  Ebbsfleet*,  the  traditional  landing-place  of  Hengest  ^, 
the  actual  landing-place  of  Augustine.  The  river  Stour 
then  expanded  into  an  estuary ;  so  that  the  ^  Isle  of  Thanet ' 
was  really  an  island  ^,  the  stream  forming  a  strait  "^  from 
Richborough,  the  venerable  Roman  town  of  Rutupiae,  to 
the  south,  and  Reculver,  the  Roman  Regulbium,  to  the 
north,  on  the  mouth  of  the  Thames.  After  thus  touching 
British  ground,  Augustine  sent  a  message  to  King  Ethel- 
bert  to  this  effect,  '  that  they  were  come  from  Rome  with 
the  best  of  all  messages,  and  that  if  he  would  accept  it,  he 
would  undoubtedly  ensure  himself  an  everlasting  kingdom.' 
Ethelbert    answered   at   once  kindly   and   cautiously ;  he 

^  Ep.  xi.  6t. 

^  Kitchin,  i.  88.  For  her  utterly  evil  character  see  Hodgkin,  v.  207. 
Neustria,  as  it  soon  began  to  be  called,  was  the  land  of  the  Western  Franks, 
and  had  its  centre  at  Paris  or  at  Soissons.  Chlotair  became  king  in  his 
infancy,  a.  d.  584  ;  Fredegond  died  in  597. 

'  A  story  current  in  the  eleventh  century  described  them  as  encoun- 
tering, in  a  town  of  Anjou,  rude  insults  such  as  men  like  them  in  those 
days  might  easily  provoke  by  their  grave  aspect  and  strange  attire. 
"Women,  says  Gocelin,  were  foremost  in  this  barbarous  inhospitality, 
driving  them  away  like  so  many  '  wolves,*  with  wild  outcries,  and  not 
allowing  them  even  to  sleep  under  an  elm.     Vit.  Maj.  Aug.  c.  i.  s.  10. 

*  See  Stanley's  Memorials  of  Canterbury,  p.  29.  Thorn  calls  the  landing- 
place  Retesborough,  X  Script.  1759. 

^  'Heopwines  fleet/  Sax.  Chr.  a.  449.     '  Fleet  *  =  harbour. 

*  See  Pearson's  Hist.  Maps  of  Engl.  p.  2. 

'  Called  '  the  river  Wantsum  ; '  Bede,  i.  25.  See  the  maps  in  Hasted's 
Hist,  of  Kent,  iv.  288. 

E   2 


52  They  land  in  Kent. 

CHAP.  II.  would  not  hastily  commit  himself.  Let  the  strangers  abide 
in  the  isle  of  Thanet  until  he  could  see  what  to  do  with 
Meeting  them :  their  wants  should  be  well  supplied.  '  Some  days 
Ethelbert.  ^^ter,  he  Came  into  the  isle/  prepared  to  give  them  an 
audience :  but,  as  a  Teuton,  he  believed  in  witch-lore^, 
and,  after '  using  augury,'  concluded  that  the.  foreign  priests 
might  employ  spells  ^  to  mislead  him,  if  he  received  them 
under  a  roof.  He  stipulated,  therefore,  that  they  should 
address  him  in  the  open  air,  and  the  meeting  was  thus 
arranged 3.  Ethelbert  and  his  attendant  thanes^  took 
their  seats,  and  saw  some  forty  men  advancing,  with  a  lofty 
silver  cross  ^  borne  up  in  front,  and  beside  this  a  board,  on 
which  was  painted  the  figure  of  the  Crucified^.  He 
must  have  seen  some  such  emblems  of  Christianity  belong- 
ing to  his  wife  or  to  her  chaplain,  but  he  had  never  perhaps 
beheld  their  faith  represented  with  such  ritual  solemnity ; 
and  Gregory's  well-known  opinion  of  the  value  of  sacred 
paintings'^,  as  impressing  religious  truths  on  the  mind,  was 
probably  Augustine's   reason   for  displaying  one   in  this 

^  Kemble,  i.  428 ;  Turner,  iii.  135. 

"^  Bede,  i.  25,  Cp.  iv.  27,  *  per  incantationes ; '  Theodore's  Penitential, 
i.  15.  4  ;  Egbert's,  i.  8.  i  ;  Council  of  Clovesho,  c.  3  ;  of  Celchyth,  c.  3. 

^  '  According  to  tradition,  at  Richborough  ; '  English  Life  of  St.  Augustine, 
p.  93.  A  cruciform  ridge  there  was  long  called  'St.  Augustine's  Cross.' 
Another  traditional  site  is  the  high  ground  above  Minster. 

*  ' Comitibus,*  his  personal  companions,  'gesiths'  (properly,  'fellow- 
travellers'),  who  acted  as  his  'thanes,'  ministri.  See  Kemble,  i.  168; 
Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  *i49 ;  Lappenberg,  ii.  317  ;  Freeman,  Growth  of 
Engl.  Constit.  p.  50.     Compare  Bede,  iii.  22  ;  iv.  22  ;  v.  5. 

^  In  later  times,  'on  donna  le  nom  de  Croix  a  toutes  les  processions;* 
L'Art  de  Verifier,  ii.  5. 

^  Gocelin,   Vit.  Maj.    S.  Aug.  s.   16 :    *  imaginem    Domini    Salvatoris, 
formose  atque  aurose  in  tabula  depictam.'    '  Wise  pomp,'  remarks  Haddan, 
Remains,  p.  305.    Compare  Wordsworth,  Eccl.  Sonnets,  No.  14  : — 
'The  Cross  preceding  Him  who  floats  in  air. 
The  pictured  Saviour.' 

'  Greg.  Ep.  ix.  52,  that  paintings  of  Christ  are  not  to  be  worshipped, 
but  to  be  used  as  stimulants  to  devout  affection.  '  lUum  adoramus  quern 
per  imaginem  aut  natum,  aut  passum,  sed  et  in  throno  sedentem  recorda- 
mur.'  So  in  Ep.  ix.  105,  to  a  bishop  who  had  broken  some  pictures  which 
had  been  '  adored '  :  '  Your  duty  was  et  illas  servare,  et  ab  earum  adoratu 
populum  prohibere.'  And  similarly  Ep.  xi.  13,  dwelling  on  the  usefulness 
of  sacred  paintings  to  those  who  cannot  read,  but  absolutely  forbidding 
them  to  be  'adored.' 


Augustine  before  Ethelbert.  53 

momentous  conference.  A  procession,  too,  was  associated  chap.  n. 
with  choral  supplications,  and  Gregory  had  instituted 
a  'sevenfold  litany,'  or  procession,  to  implore  the  Divine 
succour  during  a  pestilence^;  on  this  occasion,  therefore, 
his  emissaries,  as  they  approached,  *  sang  litanies,  entreating 
the  Lord  for  their  own  salvation  and  that  of  those  to  whom 
they  came.'  The  chant,  although  in  a  strange  tongue,  must 
have  brought  to  the  rude  listeners  a  sense  of  spiritual 
power  :  and  Augustine's  majestic  person,  towering  up  above 
all  his  companions  ^,  was  certain  to  contribute  to  the  im- 
posing effect  of  the  scene.  The  king  bade  his  visitors  sit 
down,  and  Augustine  spoke,  assisted  by  a  Gallic  interpreter^. 
He  told,  said  a  Saxon  homilist  long  after,  'how  the  tender- 
hearted Jesus  by  His  own  throes,'— and  here,  doubtless,  he 
pointed  to  the  cross  and  the  painting,—'  had  redeemed  the 
sinful  world,  and  opened  the  kingdom  of  heaven  to  all 
believers^.'  Bede  says  simply,  that ' he  preached  to  them 
the  word  of  life ; '  and  Ethelbert's  answer  was  '  exactly 
what  a  king  should  have  said  on  such  an  occasion^.'  '  Fair 
words  and  promises  are  these;  but  seeing  they  are  new 
and  doubtful,  I  cannot  give  in  to  them,  and  give  up  what 
I,  with  all  the  English  race,  have  so  long  observed.  But 
since  you  have  come  a  long  way  from  a  strange  country,  in 
order — as  I  think  I  clearly  see — to  make  known  to  us  what 
you  believe  to  be  best  and  truest,  we  ^  do  not  mean  to  do  you 
any  harm,  but  rather  will  treat  you  kindly,  and  take  care 

^  Joan.  Diac.  i.  42.  *  Litany*  is  here  used  as  =  procession.  'Let  the 
litany  of  clergy  start  from  St.  John  Baptist's,'  &c.  See  Palmer,  Orig.  Lit. 
i.  271,  and  the  note  to  Greg.  Op.  iv.  1284.  In  Ep.  xi.  51  Gregory  exhorts 
the  Sicilian  bishops  to  have  litanies  on  Wednesdays  and  Fridays,  in  order 
to  obtain  protection  against  barbarian  invaders. 

2  If  vre  can  at  all  rely  on  the  traditional  account  in  Gocelin,  Vit.  Aug. 
49,  professing  to  come  from  an  old  man  whose  grandfather  Augustine 
had  converted  and  baptized  ;  *  Staturam  proceram  et  arduam,  adeo  ut 
a  scapulis  populo  superemineret.'  In  this  he  resembled  St.  Columba :  see 
Adamnan,  Vit.  Col.  i.  i. 

^  He  vras  to  procure  some  such,  Greg.  Ep.  vi.  58. 

*  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  11  ;  Churton's  Early  Eng.  Ch.  p.  39. 

^  Stanley,  p.  34.  See  the  rendering  in  Freeman's  Old-Engl.  Hist.  p.  47. 
Malmesbury  remarks  on  the  kindness  and  fairness  of  the  speech  ;  Gest. 
Reg.  i.  s.  10. 

*  Observe  the  plural,  *  Nolumus  molesti  esse  vobis.'  The  king  unites 
his  thanes  with  him  in  this  announcement. 


54  Ethelbert's  Reply. 

CHAP.  II.  that  you  have  all  that  you  need ;  and  we  shall  not  hinder 
you  from  bringing  over  any  of  our  people  to  your  own 
belief.'  One  thing  this  royal  answer  lacked, — a  promise  to 
hear  their  preaching  again :  but  they  had  got  as  much  as 
at  first  they  could  hope  for  in  what  Montalembert^  calls 
the  '  sincere  and  truly  liberal '  speech  of  a  king  evidently 
desirous  to  do  justice,  and  to  weigh  his  words  in  order  fully 
to  make  them  good.  Such  a  typical  Teuton  prince  might 
well  represent  that  kind  of  preparedness  for  Christianity^ 
which  consisted  in  a  sense  of  the  spiritual  world,  of  the 
gravity  and  solemnity  of  life,  of  rights  as  involving 
obligations,  in  a  regard  for  truth  and  noble  manliness,  for 
liberty  in  combination  with  authority,  for  the  purity  which 
could  dignify  the  home.  It  was  natural  for  him  to  be 
fair  and  serious  at  a  crisis  of  such  magnitude.  He  could 
discern  the  presence  of  something  great  in  these  represent- 
atives of  an  unseen  Kingdom  :  and  so  he  might  be  trusted 
to  give  them  another  opportunity  of  stating  their  case^. 
Meantime,  he  promised  them  a  house  in  the  '  metropolis,'  as 
Bede  loftily  calls  it,  of  his  empire,  the  old  Roman  town  of 
Durovemum,  which  had  become  '  the  Burgh  of  the  men  of 
Kent,'  and  from  which,  in  the  words  of  an  old  English 
rhythm,  were  now  to  come  '  to  Angle-kin  Christianity  and 
bliss,  for  God  and  for  the  world*.' 
Entrance  Thither  let  us  follow  them,  as  they  take  the  Roman  road 
terbnry.  across  the  downs  to  the  top  of  the  present  St.  Martin's  hill, 
and  look  forth,  first  on  a  little  Roman-British  chapel  on  the 
slopes  below  them,  and  then  on  the  wood-built  city  further 
down,  the  Canterbury  of  Ethelbert.  That  little  oratory  was 
St.  Martin's,  where  Bertha  and  Liudhard  had  for  many  years 
worshipped,  and  probably  prayed  for  such  a  day  as  was 
now  dawning.  We,  as  we  look  back  to  its  sunrise,  may 
well  enter  into  Dean  Stanley's  remark,  that  the  view  from 

^  In  his  '  Monks  of  the  West.' 

2  Cp.  Church's  Gifts  of  Civilization,  &c.,  p.  320  ff.,  and  Morivale's  Con- 
version, of  Northern  Nations,  p.  88  flf. 

'  Elmham  ascribes  it  to  Bertha's  influence  that  her  husband's  mind 
was  favourably  disposed  toveards  Augustine's  preaching  ;  Hist.  Mon. 
S.  Aug.  p.  209.     So  Malmesbury  as  to  Liudhard,  Gest.  Rtg.  i.  s.  9. 

*  Chronicle,  a.  10 11. 


Augustine  enters  Canterbury.  55 

the  present  church  of  St.  Martin  is  in  this  sense  '  one  of  the  chap.  ir. 
most  inspiriting  that  can  be  found  in  all  the  world  ^.'  Let 
any  one  visit  that  venerable  building,  where  the  lines 
of  Roman  brick  ^  seem  to  assert  its  continuity  with  Bertha's 
place  of  prayer,  and  then  ascend  to  the  brow  of  the  hill, 
and  recall  that  day  in  the  Ascension  week  of  597  when 
Augustine  first  beheld  the  future  seat  of  his  archbishopric. 
He  would  take  possession  of  Canterbury  for  Christ.  The 
cross  was  again  uplifted  by  the  cross-bearer,  and  with  it 
'  the  likeness  of  the  great  King,  our  Lord  ^ : '  and  the 
brethren  accompanied  their  abbot  in  solemn  order  down 
the  hill,  chanting  a  pathetic  antiphon  belonging  to  the 
Rogation  days,  which  they  had  perhaps  heard  in  the 
previous  spring  on  their  arrival  in  Provence*,  and  which 
long  remained  in  the  Rogation  services  of  the  Church 
of  Lyons  ^,  uniting  the  urgent  intercession  of  '  the  man 
of  desires '  for  the  ruined  sanctuary  of  Judah  ^  with  that 
characteristic  watchword  of  Paschal  joy  to  which  Gregory 
had  hoped  that  '  Angles '  might  yet  listen.  '  We  beseech 
Thee,  O  Lord,  in  Thy  great  mercy,  let  Thine  anger  and 
wrath  be  turned  away  from  this  city,  and  from  Thy  holy 
house,  for  we  have  sinned.  Alleluia!'  With  such  a 
combination  of  humility ''^  and  thankfulness  was  inaugurated 
the  foundation  of  the  English  Church  properly  so  called. 

If  we  follow  the  missionaries,  in  imagination,  into  Canter- 
bury, and  over  the  ground  now  called  St.  Alphage  Lane, 

*  Stanley,  p.  54. 

^  *  Small  portions  only  of  the  Roman  walls  remain.     Roman  bricks  are 
used  as  old  material  in  the  parts  rebuilt '  (Parker,  Goth.  Arch.  p.  10). 
2  Bede,  i.  25. 

*  The  institution  of  Rogations,  or  processional  supplications  in  time  of 
distress,  had  been  invested  with  new  solemnity  by  Mamertus  of  Vienne 
before  the  Ascension-day  of  468  ;  see  Greg.  Turon.  H.  Fr.  ii.  34.  Thence 
the  observance  spread.  Augustine  would  have  heard  how  St.  Caesarius 
had  recommended  it  :  and  although  it  had  not  as  yet  been  adopted  at 
Rome,  he  made  it  an  institution  in  the  English  Church  (Council  of 
Clovesho,  a.  747).  Bede  himself  died  on  the  Rogation  Wednesday  of  735. 
In  597  Ascension  Day  was  on  May  23. 

^  Martene,  de  Ant.  Eccl.  Rit.  iii.  529. 
^  Based  on  an  old  Latin  version  of  Daniel  ix.  16. 

^  The  verse  is  also  in  a  hymn  composed  by  a  teacher,  himself  a  penitent, 
at  Whithern  ;  Bp,  Forbes,  Lives  of  Ninian  and  Kentigern,  p.  292. 


56  Life  in  Canterbury, 

CHAP.  n.  almost  under  the  shadow  of  the  vast  metropolitan  church, 
we  are  near  the  '  Stable-gate/  where,  in  close  vicinity  to 
a  heathen  temple,  they  were  to  make  their  temporary 
home^  There  they  dwelt,  as  Bede  says 2,  'after  the 
Life  of  the  primitive  Church  model,  giving  themselves  to  frequent 
arieHn  prayers,  watchings,  and  fastings;  preaching  to  all  who 
Canter-  were  within  their  reach,  disregarding  all  worldly  things 
"*^*  as  matters  with  which  they  had  nothing  to  do,  accepting 
from  those  whom  they  taught  just  what  seemed  necessary 
for  livelihood,  Kving  themselves  altogether  in  accordance 
with  what  they  taught,  and  with  hearts  prepared  to  suffer 
every  adversity,  or  even  to  die,  for  that  truth  which 
they  preached.  What  need  to  say  more?'  he  proceeds 
significantly :  '  some  believed  and  were  baptized  ^,  admiring 
the  simplicity  of  their  blameless  life,  and  the  sweetness 
of  their  heavenly  teaching.'  It  is  the  first  of  several  beauti- 
ful summaries,  given  by  the  single-minded  and  thoroughly 
pious  historian  *,  of  the  results  produced  by  '  the  argument 
of  a  pious  life,'  the  evidence  derived  from  self-devotion  and 
consistency.  Doubtless  there  were  among  their  hearers  not 
a  few  who  were  '  feeling  after  God ' :  the  serene  brightness, 
the  mysterious  majesty,  the  unimaginable  tenderness  of 
the  new   faith   had  a  fascinating  power  ^,  which  became 

*  Elmham,  Hist.  Mon.  S.  Aug.  p.  91  : — 

'Mansio  signatur,  quae  Stabelgate  notatur.' 
Thorn  (X  Script.  1759)  describes  the  place  as  '  in  the  parish  of  St.  Alphege, 
over  against  the  King's  Street,  on  the  north.' 

2  Bede,  i.  26. 

^  'You,'  wrote  Alcuin  to  the  Kentish  people,  *are  the  origin  of  the 
salvation  of  the  English,'  &c.  ;  Ep.  59.     (Op.  i.  78.) 

*  See  Bede,  iii.  5,  on  Aidan  :  *  Quod  non  alitor  quam  vivebat  cum  suis, 
ipse  docebat.'  lb.  iii.  17  :  '  Industriam  faciendi  simul  et  docendi  man- 
data  caelestia.'  Again,  Fursey  wrought  on  many  souls  '  et  exemplo 
virtutis  et  incitamento  sermonis,'  iii.  19  :  Tuda  '  et  verbo  cunctos  docebat 
et  opere,'  iii.  26  :  so  of  Oftfor,  among  the  Hwiccas,  *  verbum  fidei 
praedicans,  simul  et  exemplum  vivendi  exhibens,'.-  iv.  23 :  and  so  of  Cuth- 
bert  in  iv.  27,  28,  *  verbo  praedicationis  simul  et  opere  virtutis.  .  .  .  Et 
quod  maxime  doctores  juvare  solet,  ea  quae  agenda  docebat,  ipse  prius  agendo 
praemonstrabat.'  Cp.  Ep.  to  Egbert,  2,  *  et  operatione  et  doctrina  .  .  .  Neu- 
tra  enim  haec  vii*tus  sine  altera  rite  potest  impleri,'  &c.  Compare  Gregory's 
epitaph  in  Bede,  ii.  i  :  <  Implebatque  actu  quicquid  sermone  docebat,'  and 
his  Pastoral  Rule,  ii.  3. 

^  The  Teutonic  races .  .  .  found  themselves  under  the  spell  of   the 


Baptism  of  Ethelbert.  57 

irresistible  in  connexion  with  such  signal  purity  and  chap,  n, 
whole-hearteclness  as  the  lives  of  its  preachers  displayed. 
They  were  daily  to  be  seen  moving  to  and  fro  between  the 
Stable-gate  and  St.  Martin's  ^5  where  they '  sang  the  Psalms, 
prayed,  celebrated  mass  2,  preached,  baptized.'  According  Baptism 
to  the  usual  story  ^,  which  was  a  part  of  the  Canterbury  ^ei-t. 
tradition,  the  Whitsun-eve  which  followed  on  their  entrance 
into  Canterbury,  that  is,  the  ist  of  June,  beheld  the  most 
signal  of  their  successes  in  the  baptism  of  Ethelbert*. 
Whenever  it  took  place, — and  it  must  have  taken  place 
during  this  summer,  or  at  least  in  the  next  autumn, — it 
was  an  event  standing  by  itself  ^ ;  for  no  royal  conversion 
that  we  read  of  ^  could  in  all  its  circumstances,  and  with 
regard  both  to  moral  reality  or  to  grandeur  of  result, 
come  up  to  that  which  led  the  Kentish  monarch  to  profess 
the  Christian  faith  with  a  triple  '  I  believe,'  and  descend  as 
a  proselyte  into  '  the  salutary  laver,'  that,  in  the  words 
actually  used, '  he  might  be  born  again  into  the  new  infancy 
of    true    innocence,'   and   be   'strengthened   by   the   clear 

mightiest,  the  tenderest,  and  most  wonderful  of  religions ; '  Church, 
Beginning  of  M.  Ages,  p.  257. 

^  Gocelin  makes  '  the  blessed  prelate  Letard  '  attend  at  St.  Martin's 
when  the  Roman  teachers,  superior  to  him  as  gold  to  silver, '  ibidem  quae 
Dei  sunt  agebant ; '  Vit.  Maj.  i.  s.  20.  In  1035  St.  Martin's  appears  as  the 
see  of  a  bishop-suffragan  for  the  diocese  of  Canterbury. 

^  '  Missas  facere,'  a  phrase  which,  in  the  singular,  appears  first  in 
St.  Ambrose,  Ep.  xx.  4,  *  Missam  facere  coepi  ;  dum  offero,'  &c.  ;  where 
the  context  suggests  an  extension  of  meaning  from  the  actual  dismissal 
of  catechumens  before  the  oblation  to  the  service  which  followed  it. 
In  the  84th  canon  of  the  so-called  4th  Council  of  Carthage,  heathens 
are  permitted  to  remain  in  church  '  usque  ad  missam  catechmnenorum.' 
From  the  two  '  dismissals,*  first  of  the  catechumens  and  afterwards 
of  the  faithful  (see  *  Ite  missa  est '),  the  former  of  which  was  the  dividing 
line  between  the  two  parts  of  the  liturgy,  the  whole  derived  a  name 
convenient  from  its  brevity,  and  interesting  in  an  antiquarian  sense, 
but  possessing  no  other  merit.     (Missa  =  missio.) 

^  Elmham,  Hist.  Monast.  S.  Aug.  p.  137 :  '  In  die  Pentecostes  .  .  . 
Ethelbertus  baptizatus  est.'  So  Thorn.  X  Script,  1759.  Yet  from  the 
verses  in  Elmham,  p.  91,  it  might  be  inferred  that  the  king's  baptism 
was  but  a  month  before  Augustine's  consecration  (which  is  likelier). 

*  The  forms  used  might  be  those  of  the  Gregorian  Sacramentary, 
Muratori,  Lit.  Rom.  ii.  62.     See  especially  the  Benedictio  Fontis. 

*  'Illuxit  dies,'  exclaims  Gocelin,  '  Anglis  at  Angelis  solemnissimus ;  * 
s.  22. 

^  Contrast  it,  e.g.  with  that  of  Clevis. 


58  Conversion  of  Kentishmen. 

riiAP.  II.  shining  of  the  Holy  Spirit  ^'  His  example  told  naturally 
upon  his  subjects :  '  day  after  day  more  people  came 
together  ^  to  hear  the  Word,  and,  forsaking  heathen  rites, 
to  embrace  the  faith,  and  so  attach  themselves  to  the  unity 
of  Christ's  holy  Church.  It  is  said  that  the  king  so  far 
encouraged  their  conversion  as  on  the  one  hand  to  compel 
no  man  to  become  a  Christian  ^,  and  on  the  other  to  show 
a  closer  affection  to  those  who  believed,  as  being  heirs  with 
him  of  the  heavenly  kingdom.  For  he  had  learned  from  his 
teachers  that  the  service  of  Christ  ought  to  be  voluntary, 
not  compulsory.*  They  had  learned  this  lesson  from  their 
teacher  :  Gregory  had  written,  some  years  before,  '  He  who 
is  brought  to  the  font  by  coercion,  instead  of  persuasion, 
is  but  too  likely  to  relapse  *.' 

Death  of  go  ends  the  first  scene  of  this  great  drama :  nor  can 
we  fail  to  be  interested  in  the  coincidence,  that  on  the 
Sunday  morning  next  after  that  Pentecost,  i.  e.  on  June  9, 
597  ^,  the  noblest  missionary  career  ever  accomplished  in 
Britain  came  to  its  end  in  the  distant  monastery  of  Icolm- 

^  Muratori,  Lit.  Rom.  ii.  157,  65,  89. 

^  One  would  like  to  think  that  there  is  some  truth  in  the  story  which 
Gocelin  professes  to  have  gained  from  tradition.  A  youth  mingles  in 
the  throng  in  order  to  gratify  a  scornful  curiosity.  Augustine  gazes 
fixedly  at  him,  and  says  to  his  attendant,  '  Bring  that  young  man  to  me.' 
The  youth,  overawed,  clasps  the  Saint's  feet ;  all  his  pride  and  levity 
give  place  to  faith  :  Augustine  embraces,  instructs,  baptizes,  solemnly 
blesses  him.    Vit.  Maj.  49. 

^  See  Freeman,  Norm.  Conq.  i.  29.  In  this  Ethelbert  towers  above 
various  royal  promoters  of  Christianity,  such  as  Harold  Blaatand  of 
Denmark,  and  the  two  Olafs,  and  Eric  IX  of  Sweden  among  the  Finns. 
Even  Stephen  of  Hungary,  who  began  like  him,  was  provoked  by  Pagan 
rebellion  to  banish  or  enslave  those  who  clung  to  the  old  worship.  The 
result,  says  Hardwick,  Ch.  Hist.,  M.  Ages,  p.  139,  was  '  a  terrible  revulsion 
at  his  death  in  favour  of  the  Pagan  creed.'  Cp.  Maclear,  Conversion  of 
Slavs,  p.  58. 

*  Greg.  Ep.  i.  47.  Cp.  i.  10,  35,  viii.  25,  ix.  6,  xiii.  12,  against  coercion  of 
Jews,  or  interference  with  their  worship.  Yet  Gregory  was  not  thoroughly 
consistent :  in  Ep.  iv.  26  he  suggests  that  Sardinian  church-tenants 
obstinate  in  Paganism  should  be  heavily  taxed.  In  Ep.  ix.  65,  that  slaves 
refusing  to  be  converted  should  be  scourged,  &c.  In  Ep.  ii.  51,  he  tells 
schismatic  bishops  that  being  in  error,  they  get  no  blessing  through  the 
*  persecution '  of  which  they  complain, — implying  that  it  is  simply  a  just 
infliction.     See  Dean  Church,  Miscell.  Essays,  p.  245. 

'  See  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  310 ;  Skene,  Celt.  Scotl.  ii.  139 ;  Stephen, 
Hist.  Scott.  Ch.  i.  75. 


Death  of  Columba,  59 

kill  ^  While  Augustine  was  building  up  the  first  Church  chap.  rr. 
of  Englishmen,  Columba  was,  in  his  own  words,  '  entering 
on  the  way  of  his  fathers  ^/  and  leaving  to  his  disciples  the 
glory  of  an  apostolic  example,  and  the  impulse  which  was 
destined  to  take  up  the  work  of  the  Augustinian  mission 
itself  in  the  northern  English  realms,  and  to  succeed  where 
that  mission  had  seemed  to  fail,  or  at  any  rate  where  its 
energy  had  been  arrested.  One  can  hardly  read  the  history 
of  the  Christianizing  of  our  forefathers,  with  its  unexpected 
disappointments  and  its  unexpected  triumphs, — its  tale 
of  lights  kindled  and  then  quenched,  and  again  '  relumed ' 
quo  minime  reris,  of  instruments  changed  with  startling 
suddenness,  and  hopes  realized  in  forms  far  out  of  calculation, 
— and  not  remember  how  St.  Paul  was  at  one  time  forbidden 
to  preach  in  '  Asia  ^,'  and  how  baffling  to  sanguine  hearts 
must  have  been  his  detention  under  Felix.  These  mysterious 
'  chains  and  sequences,'  to  use  Origen's  phrase  ',  in  the 
Divine  action  upon  men  or  nations,  ought  assuredly  to 
teach  us  two  things — an  awe  of  the  plan  that  so  far  tran- 
scends its  agents,  and  a  patient  assurance  that  it  will  fulfil 
itself  in  its  time  ^. 

The  next  step,  for  Augustine,  was  to  obtain  episcopal  Conseera- 
consecration.     For  this,  '  according  to  Gregory's  directions,'  ^ustine.  " 
he  was  to  apply  to  that  Gallic  hierarchy  which  the  Pope 
could  not  but  regard  as  having  been  apathetic  and  inert 
with  reference  to  the  evangelization  of  the  heathens  of 
Britain  ^.     To  Gaul,  and  to  the  principal  church  in  South 

^  Bp.  Keeves  (p.  259)  supposes  lona  to  be  a  corruption  of  Iowa,  the 
adjectival  form  of  lou,  la,  Hy,  *Hii'  (Bede)  or  Y,  i.e.  'The  island,' 
lengthened  into  I-colm-kill,  the  Island  of  'Columba  of  the  Church,'  a 
name  given  him  for  his  early  piety  (p.  Ixx). 

^  Adamnan,  Vit.  Col.  iii.  23.  Columba  was  born  in  Donegal,  Dec.  7, 
521  ;  founded  a  monastery  at  Derry  in  546,  another  at  Durrow,  cir.  553 ; 
came  over  to  Hy  in  563  (not,  as  Bede  says,  565  ;  Lanigan,  ii.  158  ;  Reeves, 
p.  Ixxv).     He  had  studied  under  both  the  Finnians. 

^  Acts  xvi.  6 ;  cp.  xix.  10.  *  Orig.  c.  Cels.  iv.  8. 

^  '  Lord  !  who  Thy  thousand  years  dost  wait 

To  work  the  thousandth  part 
Of  Thy  vast  plan,  for  us  create 
With  zeal  a  patient  heart.' 

Newman's  Verses,  p.  156. 
«  Greg.  Ep.  vi.  58. 


6o  Consecration  of  Augustine, 

CHAP.  II.  Gaul,  that  of  Aries, — which  had  made  good  its  precedence 
among  Gallic  bishoprics  ^,  and  could  boast  of  such  prelates 
as  the  younger  Hilary  and  as  Caesarius, — Augustine  repaired 
in  the  autumn.  He  was  consecrated  by  the  archbishop 
Virgilius^,  and  by  other  Frankish  prelates,  on  the  i6th  of 
November,  to  be  himself  'Archbishop  of  the  English.' 
Hastening  home,  he  found,  to  his  joy,  a  multitude  of  new 
proselytes :  and  on  Christmas  Day,  as  Gregory,  in  a  letter 
glowing  with  thankfulness,  informed  his  brother  patriarch 
Eulogius  of  Alexandria  ^,  more  than  ten  thousand  Kentish 
men  were  baptized, — many  of  whom,  no  doubt,  may  be 
reckoned  as  rather  conformists  to  their  king's  new  religion 
than  genuine  believers  in  its  truth  *.  Established  as  bishop 
in  Canterbury,  Augustine  received  from  Ethelbert  the  gift 
of  his  own  palace  ^ :  and  the  king,  according  to  tradition, 
actually  withdrew  from  his  capital  to  Reculver  ^.   Near  the 

^  See  Fleury,  b.  23,  c.  45,  compared  with  Gregory's  words,  referred  to 
below.  Zosimus  favoured  Aries  ;  other  popes,  as  Leo,  did  not,  until 
Symmachus  made  its  bishop  his  vicar  ;  Bened.  Edd,  note  on  Greg.  Ep.  v. 
53,  where  Gregory,  referring  to  ancient  custom,  grants  a  pall  to  the  bishop 
of  Aries.  On  the  civil  grandeur  of  Aries  as  the  residence  of  the  Gallic 
Prefect,  see  Life  of  St.  German,  p.  187.  The  Benedictine  biographers  of 
Gregory  (Vit.  Greg.  iii.  3.  3),  after  observing  that  the  city  of  Aries  had 
been  made  the  civil  capital  of  Gaul,  add|  in  words  which  have  a  far-reach- 
ing significance,  *  Ab  ea  dignitate  politica  primatus  ecclesiasticus  initium 
duxisse  videtur  :  *  yet  the  bishops  of  the  province  in  450  had  asserted  the 
primacy  of  the  see  on  the  ground  that  it  was  founded  by  the  apostolic 
Trophimus  ;  Leo,  Ep.  65.  Duchesne  says  that  although  the  see  of  Aries 
did  not  acquire  an  '  effective '  Roman  vicariate,  and  under  the  Franks  had 
only  a  presidency  in  synods,  yet  its  ecclesiastical  importance  detracted 
from  that  of  Milan  ;  Origines  du  Culte,  p.  39. 

^  Bede  mistakenly  says,  by  Etherius,  whom,  further  on,  he  treats  as 
predecessor  of  Virgilius  at  Aries,  i.  27,  28.  Etherius  was  archbishop  of 
Lyons,  contemporary  of  Virgilius  of  Aries.  Virgilius  had  been  abbot  of 
Autun ;  Greg.  Tur.  H.  Fr.  ix.  23.  He  died  an  old  man,  while  reclining 
on  his  couch  and  saying  his  office  ;  Mabillon,  Ann.  Bened.  i.  312.  Bede's 
mistake  is  ingeniously  accounted  for  by  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  369  :  Nothelm, 
who  copied  Roman  documents  for  Bede,  copied  one  letter  (out  of  a  series 
of  commendatory  letters)  to  Etherius,  of  596,  another  to  Virgilius,  of  601, 
and  Bede  supposed  both  to  have  been  written  to  the  bishop  of  Aries. 

^  Greg.  Ep.  viii.  30.  Gocelin  says  they  were  baptized  in  the  Swale  :  if 
so,  it  was  the  passage  so  called  between  Sheppey  and  the  mainland, 

*  See  Bede,  ii.  5  :  '  vel  favore  vel  timore  regie,'  &c. 

^  See  Palgrave,  Engl.  Comm.  p.  156  ;  Stanley,  p.  39. 

•  See  Stanley,  p.  45.     The  story  has  a  suspicious  look. 


Foundation  of  Canterbury  Cathedral,      6i 

palace  stood  a  desecrated  church,  built  '  by  the  old  handi-  chap.  n. 
work  of  Roman  Christians  ^ : '  Augustine,  with  the  royal  J!^^^^^- 
sanction,  reclaimed  it,  and  re-dedicated  it,  in  imitation  of  Canter- 
the  Lateran  basilica  at  Rome,  which  he  knew  so  well  as  cathedral 
Gregory's  cathedral,  '  in  the  name  of  the  Holy  Saviour, 
Jesus  Christ  our  God  and  Lord  ^Z  This  was  the  beginning 
of  our  original  and  metropolitan  '  Christ  Church,'  the 
mother-church  of  English  Christianity.  In  restoring  the 
old  fabric,  Augustine  enlarged  it  into  stately  proportions, 
and  modelled  its  arrangements  from  the  Vatican  basilica  of 
St.  Peter.  The  nave  had  aisles  ^,  and  towers  on  the  north 
and  south :  eastward  of  the  '  choir  of  the  singers '  there 
was,  as  in  the  present  church,  a  lofty  ascent,  required  by 
the  construction  of  a  crypt  'such  as  the  Romans  call  a 
Confession.'  The  account  extant  speaks  of  two  apses,  at 
the  eastern  and  western  ends,  each  with  its  altar :  in  the 
western,  against  the  wall,  stood  the  episcopal  throne,  and 
some  way  to  the  east  of  it  was  an  altar  which  is  dis- 
tinguished from  '  the  great  altar '  at  the  east  end,  but  which, 
from  its  nearness  to  the  '  cathedra,'  is  thought  to  have  been 
the  original  altar,  as  was  the  case  in  St.  Peter's  *.  Augustine 
had  a  general  licence  from  Ethelbert  to  restore  for  Christian 
use  any  old  British  churches  :  and  one  such,  which  had  long 

^  Bede,  i.  33  :  '  antique  Komanorum  fidelium  opere  factam  fuisse 
didicerat.'  Cp.  his  reference  to  the  Roman  fountain  at  Carlisle,  Vit. 
Cuthb.  27. 

2  -^Ifric,  on  coming  to  the  archbishopric  in  995,  was  told  by  the  oldest 
men  whom  he  could  consult  that  Augustine  hallowed  the  minster  in 
Christ's  name  and  St.  Maiy's,  on  the  mass-day  of  SS.  Primus  and 
Felicianus,  i.  e.  June  9  ;  Chronicle,  a.  995.  King  Wihtred's  '  Privilege 
to  Churches'  describes  it  as  'the  Church  of  the  Saviour';  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  iii.  240.  For  the  service  of  dedication,  see  Muratori,  Lit. 
Rom.  i.  613. 

^  See  the  description  cited  and  commented  on  in  Willis's  Hist,  of  Cant. 
Cath.  p.  9  ff.  On  the  ancient  St.  Peter's  see  also  Lanciani,  Pagan  and 
Chr.  Rome,  p.  13a  ff.  Like  the  modern,  it  had  its  entrance  at  the  east  end  ; 
beyond,  a  square  atrium,  five  inner  doors,  a  pillared  nave  with  four  aisles, 
an  arch  with  mosaics,  a  transept  with  a  northern  baptistery,  an  apse  with 
the  altar,  and  St.  Peter's  tomb  beneath  it,  and  a  throne  at  the  western 
extremity.     It  was  half  the  size  of  its  vast  successor. 

*  Willis,  p.  29.  At  this  altar  in  the  western  apse  the  priest  when  cele- 
brating in  the  *  basilican '  manner,  *  having  his  face  turned  towards  the 
people,*  would  look  eastward. 


62         The  Mission  recruited  from  Rome. 

CHAP.  II.  been  Paganized,  and  which  stood  between  the  wall  of 
Canterbury  and  St.  Martin's,  was  hallowed  by  him  in 
memory  of  the  Roman  boy-martyr  St.  Pancras,  whose 
family  had  once  owned  the  ground  on  the  Coelian,  where 
St.  Andrew's  monastery  stood  ^.  Those  who  visit  St. 
Augustine's  College  may  see,  somewhat  eastward  of  its 
precinct,  an  old  brick  arch,  which  has  been  supposed  to  be 
a  relic  of  this  building.  While  establishing  the  conventual 
life  in  connexion  with  '  Christ  Church,'  Augustine  planned 
the  erection  of  another  monastery^,  chiefly  in  order  to 
secure  holy  ground  for  his  own  grave  ^  which  must 
necessarily  lie  outside  the  city  wall.  The  site  chosen  was 
that  on  which  stands  the  present '  St.  Augustine's.' 
Mes-  But  now  the  archbishop  found  reason  to  send  to  Gregory 

8enf  to^  ^"^  account  of  his  proceedings,  with  a  statement  of  some 
Gregory,  points  on  which  he  desired  instructions  from  Rome.  We 
had  better  consider  these  matters  in  connexion  with 
Gregory's  replies  to  Augustine.  The  bearers  of  the  letter 
were  Laurence,  a  priest,  and  Peter,  a  monk*.  They  set  forth, 
it  would  seem,  in  the  spring  of  598 :  but  here  comes  one  of 
the  difficulties  of  the  narrative.  Bede  says  that  the  Pope 
replied  '  without  delay  ' :  but  the  replies  are  expressly  dated 
June  22  in  601.  If  the  date  is  correct,  how  are  we  to 
explain  the  delay  ?  Partly,  perhaps,  by  the  necessity  of 
finding  recruits  for  the  English  mission,  partly  by  the  press 
of  anxiety  and  business  which,  coupled  with  long  and 
painful  illness  ^  weighed  heavily  even  on  such  a  spirit  as 

*  On  St.  Pancras,  see  Alb.  Butler,  or  Baring  Gould,  for  May  12. 

^  Bede,  i.  33  :  *  in  qua  et  ipsius  .  .  .  et  omnium  episcoporum  Doruver- 
nensium,  simul  et  regum  Canfciae,  poni  corpora  possent.' 

^  See  Stanley,  p.  41,  and  Hardwick's  Preface  to  Elmham,  p.  iv.  The 
planning  or  '■  fundatio '  of  the  monastery  was  in  598,  the  '  dotatio '  in  605, 
says  Elmham,  p.  81,  but  on  the  authority  of  untrustworthy  'charters.' 
Elmham  says  that  Augustine  chose  there  '  locum  sepulturae,  removed 
from  the  noise  of  the  world,  ut  sic  exiret  cum  passo  Domino  extra 
portam  ;  '  p.  82. 

*  Bede,  i.  27.  *  Keversusque  Britanniam,  misit  continue  Romam  Lauren- 
tium.  .  . .  Nee  mora  .  .  .  responsa  recepit.' 

'  See  Greg.  Ep.  x.  35.  '  For  nearly  two  years  I  have  had  to  keep  ray 
bed,  suffering  such  pain  from  gout  that  I  could  hardly  get  up  even  for 
three  hours,  on  festivals,  to  celebrate  the  rites  of  the  mass.  ...  I  am 
compelled  to  exclaim,  ''Bring  my  soul  out  of  prison  !  " '     Cp.  xi.  30,  44  ; 


Gregory^ s  Answer^,  63 

the  great  Pope's,  and  made  his  office  a  daily  burden.  If  the  chap.  ir. 
'  swords  of  the  Lombards  ^ '  were  sheathed  in  a  truce,  there 
were  urgent  Church  affairs  in  Gaul  ^  to  be  dealt  with,  and 
Gregory  was  interested,  now  in  a  theological  controversy 
which  grew  out  of  the  Eutychian  ^,  now  in  the  reunion  of 
Istrian  schismatics  to  the  Church  *.  These  are  but  specimens 
of  his  cares :  '  more  than  a  quarter  of '  all  his  letters  are 
now  assigned  to  the  year  598-9^,  yet  still  it  remains  some- 
what surprising  that  he  did  not  find  the  men  he  wanted 
and  answer  the  questions  proposed  until  three  years  had 
passed. 

The  men  selected  were  four  ^ — Mellitus,  Justus,  Paulinus,  Mission  of 
and  Rufinianus.     Of  these,  the  first  three  became  eminent  ^nd  thi^ee 
in  our  Church  history ;  the  third  being  the  most  eminent  of  others. 
all.     Several  letters  were  entrusted  to  them. 

The  longest  was  the  reply  to  Augustine's  various  queries'^-  Letters  of 
Of  these,  the  first  had  referred  to  the  division  of  the  contri-    ^®^^^^' 
butions  of  the  faithful  for  Church  purposes,  and  to  the 
arrangement  of  Augustine's  own  life  in  relation  to  his  clergy. 
Gregory  answers :  The  best  scheme  of  distribution  is  that  Reply  to 
which  the  Eoman  see  is  wont  to  recommend,  a  fourfold  ^  tine'T 

questions, 
xiii.  22.     Hodgkin  quaintly  remarks  that  he  was  '  tortured  by  dyspepsia, 
gout,  and  Lombards,'  v.  391.. 

^  Ep,  vii.  26.  In  ix.  43  he  thanks  the  Lombard  Queen  for  promoting 
this  truce.  In  his  last  year  her  son  was  baptized  with  Catholic  rites. 
Hodgkin,  v.  430.  ^  Ep.  ix.  106-116. 

^  Ep.  X.  39,  on  the  Agnoetae  :  cf.  Gore,  Dissertations,  p.  155. 

*  Ep.  ix.  93.  ^  Hodgkin,  v.  424  ;  cp.  ib.  339. 

^  Thorn  says  that  Nathanael,  afterwards  abbot  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul, 
came  with  them  ;  X  Script.  1769. 

'  Ep.  xi.  64  ;  Bede,  i.  27.  St.  Boniface  (Ep.  40)  asked  Archbishop 
Nothelm,  in  736,  to  send  him  a  copy  of  this  letter,  because  the  registrars 
of  the  Roman  Church  said  that  it  was  not  to  be  found  in  their  'scrinium.' 
But  it  does  not  therefore  follow  that  this  was  not  one  of  the  documents 
copied  by  Nothelm  for  Bede  at  Rome  ;  or  '  the  original  or  a  copy  may  have 
been  preserved  at  Canterbury.'     Plummer's  Bede,  ii.  45. 

^  Cp.  Greg.  Ep.  v.  44.  So  Gelasius  I  had  ordered  ;  Ep.  9.  27,  in  Mansi, 
viii.  45.  A  Council  of  Braga,  in  563,  had  made  a  triple  division,  not 
mentioning  the  poor,  Mansi,  ix.  778  ;  yet  the  next  Council  of  Braga  forbade 
the  bishop  to  receive  the  third  part  of  the  offerings,  ib.  ix.  839.  But  this 
prohibition  is  cancelled  in  4th  Toledo,  c.  33.  See  on  the  old  division, 
Bingham,  b.  v.  c.  6.  s.  3.  That  the  fourfold  division  was  not  imposed  by 
Gregory  on  the  new  English  Church,  see  Lord  Selborne's  Anc.  Facts  and 
Fictions  concerning  Churches  and  Tithes,  p.  104. 


64  Gregory'' s  Answers 

CHAP.  Ti.  partition  between  the  bishop,  the  clergy,  the  poor,  and  the 
needful  repair  of  churches.  But  this  will  not  apply  to  the 
present  case :  Augustine,  as  a  monk,  will  continue  to  live  in 
community  with  his  clergy  ^,  and  thus  far  perpetuate  the 
life  of  those  early  Christians,  of  whom  none  said  that  what 
he  possessed  was  his  own  2.  Clerks  in  minor  orders  ^  might 
marry  and  live  outside  the  bishop's  household,  receiving  their 
due  stipends;  but  care  must  be  taken  that  their  lives  be  spent 
under  ecclesiastical  rule,  consecrated  by  devotional  offices, 
and  kept  pure  from  all  things  unlawful,  ^he  second  question 
grew  out  of  Augustine's  observation  of  peculiarities  in  the 
Gallic  ritual.  '  Why,  seeing  that  the  faith  is  one,  are  there 
different  customs  in  different  Churches,  and  one  custom 
of  masses  in  the  holy  Roman  Church,  another  in  that  of 
Liturgical  Gaul? '  In  Gaul  he  had  evidently  noticed  the  number  of 
ences.'  coUects  in  the  Mass,  the  frequent  variations  of  the  Preface, 
the  invocation  of  the  Holy  Spirit  on  the  elements,  the  solemn 
episcopal  blessing  pronounced  after  the  breaking  of  the  Bread, 
and  before  'the  Peace'  and  the  Communion^.  Gregory,  who 
was  deeply  interested  in  liturgical  questions,  and  had  revised 

^  Compare  Bede,  iv.  27  ;  S.  Aug.  Serm.  353. 

^  Comp.  Sozomen,  vi.  31,  on  the  clergy  of  the  church  of  Rhinocurura. 

^  He  calls  them  'extra  sacros  ordines,'  meaning  the  ostiary,  lector, 
exorcist,  acolyth,  those  below  the  subdiaconate  (cf.  Muratori,  Lit.  Rom.  ii. 
408)  ;  for  this  order,  although  confessedly  not  of  apostolic  institution,  had 
come  to  be  regarded  as  sacred  in  a  sense  in  which  those  of  readers  or 
acolyths  were  not.  In  imposing  celibacy  on  subdeacons,  Ep.  i.  44,  Gregory 
was  following  Leo  the  Great  ;  see  his  Ep.  14.  4.  The  loth  canon  of  Ancyra 
had  allowed  deacons  to  marry,  if  at  their  ordination  they  had  stipulated 
for  it  ;  but  not  otherwise.  See  Routh,  Rell.  Sac.  iv.  189,  that  there  ai-e 
no  cases  in  antiquity  of  bishops,  presbyters,  or  deacons  who  married  after 
their  ordination^  '  nisi  diaconi  de  hac  re  prius  cavissent.'  But  at  the  time 
of  the  Council  of  Chalcedon  (can.  14)  the  limited  permission  as  to  deacons 
was  obsolete,  and  subdeacons  also  were  bound  to  celibacy.  The  27th 
*  Apostolic  *  canon  must  be  later  than  that  of  Ancyra. 

*  See  Muratori,  Lit.  Rom.  Vet.  ii.  517  fif.  ;  Neale  and  Forbes,  Galilean 
Liturgies,  p.  32  ff.  On  the  '  Galilean  '  missals,  and  on  the  characteristics 
of  the  'Galilean'  rite,  see  Duchesne,  Origines  du  Culte,  pp.  143  ff.,  180  ff. 
On  the  episcopal  benedictions  in  question  see  Maskell's  '  Ancient  Liturgy,* 
p.  160  ;  Warren's  Lit.  and  Ritual  of  Celtic  Ch.  p.  loi.  They  are  referred 
to  by  Caesarius,  Serm.  281,  in  app.  to  Aug.  Serm.  See  a  long  series  of 
them  in  Egbert's  Pontifical,  ed.  Surtees  Soc.  p.  58  ff.  That  they  were 
not  originally  in  the  Gregorian  Sacramentary,  see  Muratori,  Lit.  Rom. 
i.  80. 


to  Augustine's  Questions,  '65 

and  re-edited  the  '  Sacramentary '  of  his  predecessor  Gela-  chap.  ii. 
sius^  and  brought  the  Eucharistic  ceremonial  to  what  he 
considered  an  elaborate  perfection,  was  at  the  same  time  far 
from  being  a  pedant  or  a  bigot  on  such  points  :  he  advised, 
on  the  contrary,  a  wise  eclecticism.  Let  Augustine  'collect 
into  a  sort  of  bundle '  the  best  usages  of  Rome,  of  Gaul,  or 
of  other  Churches,  whatever  he  had '  found  to  be  most  pious, 
religious,  righteous,  and  most  likely  to  be  pleasing  to  God,' 
and  so  form  a  ritual  for  the  English  Christians,  who  were 
as  yet  young  in  faith,  and  could  become  accustomed  to  what- 
ever was  given  them.  There  was  no  need  to  stick  blindly  to 
the  Roman  observances  as  such.  '  For  we  ought  not  to  love 
things  for  the  sake  of  persons,  but  persons  for  the  sake  of 
things  ^.'"^  Again,  Augustine  had  asked  how  theft  from 
a  church  was  to  be  punished.  Distinguish  the  motives,  says 
Gregory  :  make  allowance  for  the  temptations  of  poverty  ; 
let  there  be  a  scale  of  penalties  fairly  adjusted ;  let  charity 
be  the  motive  and  the  regulating  principle  of  your  dis- 
cipline ^ ;  while  you  punish,  still  regard  the  offender  as 
a  son.  What  is  thus  stolen  must  be  replaced  ;  but  (observe 
his  indomitable  fair-mindedness  *)  never  let  a  church  receive 
more  compensation  than  the  amount  of  the  robbery. 

The  fourth  and  fifth  questions  related  to  marriage.  Might 
two  men  marry  two  sisters  not  near  akin  to  them  ?   It  was 

*  Jolin  the  Deacon,  ii.  17.  See  Palmer,  Orig.  Lit.  i.  113  ;  Muratori,  i.  63, 
Gregory  inserted  the  sentence,  '  Diesque  nostros  in  tua  pace  disponas,'  &c. 
(Bede,  ii.  i),  and  placed  the  Lord's  Prayer  immediately  after  the  canon. 
The  present  text  of  the  *  Gregorian  Sacramentary  *  contains  some  post- 
Gregorian  matter,  and  Duchesne  assigns  it  to  the  pontificate  of  Hadrian  I 
(ace.  772  ;  Origines,  pp.  114-119). 

2  See  Ep.  i.  43  :  '  Where  the  faith  is  one,  differences  of  custom  do  no 
harm  to  Holy  Church.'  In  ix.  12  he  disclaims  the  imputation  of  copying 
Constantinople  in  ritual,  but  says  he  is  willing  to  imitate  that  '  or  any 
other  church,  though  inferior  to  his  own,  in  what  is  good.'  This  is  over- 
looked by  Duchesne,  who  positively  pronounces  (Origines,  &c.,  p.  94)  that 
no  pope,  no  one  imbued  with  '  I'esprit  remain,'  could  have  given  the  advice 
which  is  ascribed  to  Gregory  in  this  '  answer/  and  suggests  that  all  the 
queries  and  answers  were  invented  by  Theodore.  One  may  reasonably 
think  better  both  of  the  great  pope  and  the  great  archbishop. 

^  He  mentions  fines  and  beatings  as  penalties.  An  old  Irish  canon 
wrongly  ascribed  to  St.  Patrick  mentioned,  as  one  among  three  penalties, 
the  amputation  of  hand  or  foot ;  Mansi,  vi.  519. 

*  Cp.  Church,  Miscell.  Es&ays,  p.  229,  quoting  Ep.  i.  36,  44. 

F 


66  Gregory^ s  Answers 

HAP.  II.  strange  that  such  a  question  should  have  been  put.  Gregory 
despatched  it  by  a  brief  affirmative.  But  it  was  stranger 
yet  that  Augustine  should  have  asked  whether  a  man  might 
marry  his  stepmother  or  his  sister-in-law :  Gregory's  nega- 
tive answer  alluded  to  Herod  and  the  Baptist.  Converts 
must  know  that  for  a  Christian  to  contract  such  unions 
is  a  deadly  sin  :  those  who  had  contracted  them  while 
heathens^  are  to  treat  them  as  null,  and  may  then  be 
admitted  to  the  Eucharist.  As  to  the  matrimonial  de- 
grees, the  Roman  secular  law  allowed  the  marriage  of 
first  cousins ;  but  on  natural  and  on  religious  grounds, 
Gregory  declared  against  it^.  Persons  nearer  akin  than 
the  third  degree  (i.  e.  that  beyond  first  cousins)  ought  not 
to  marry  ^. 

The  sixth  and  seventh  questions  recurred  to  the  subject  of 
Church  order.  Might  one  bishop  consecrate  a  bishop- elect 
if  other  prelates  were  not  near  enough  to  '  come  together 
easily  1 '  Gregory's  answer  shows  that  he  thought  such 
consecrations  spiritually  valid  *.     '  In  the  English  Church, 

^  As  Eadbald  did  afterwards  ;  see  p.  115.  It  was  regarded  by  heathen 
Teutons  as  more  than  permissible :  see  Kemble,  ii.  407  ;  Haddan's  Kemains, 
p.  311.  It  had  been  forbidden,  together  with  the  marriage  of  a  widower 
with  his  wife's  sister,  &c.,  by  the  third  Council  of  Paris  in  557 ;  Mansi, 
ix.  745.  See  also  Council  of  Auxerre,  ib.  ix.  914  ;  Council  of  Epaon,  c.  30, 
ib.  viii.  563. 

^  It  was  disapproved,  says  St.  Augustine,  by  Christian  public  opinion 
(although  not  forbidden  by  God's  law),  and  before  it  was  forbidden  by 
man's ;  Civ.  Dei,  xv.  16.  When  he  wrote  it  was  ordinarily  unlawful  in 
the  West,  but  lawful  in  the  East.  The  Western  Church  mind  was  against 
it,  but  Justinian  confirmed  its  legality.     Cf.  Bingham,  xvi.  11.  4. 

'  In  the  last  year  of  Gregory's  life,  a  bishop  asked  him  to  explain  the 
rumour  that  he  had  thus  sanctioned,  for  the  English  converts,  marriages 
within  the  fourth  degree.  Were  not  marriages  up  to  the  seventh  degree 
unlawful  ?  Gregory  answered  in  effect,  It  is  well  known  in  Rome  that 
my  permission  refened  only  to  the  early  days  of  the  English  mission  : 
when  its  converts  are  ripened  in  faith,  I  intend  that  they  shall  not  be 
allowed  to  marry  within  the  sixth  degree  ;  Ep.  xiv.  17. 

*  If  we  compare  (i)  the  varying  language  of  the  canons  ordering  a 
plurality  of  consecrators,  e.  g.  Apostolic  can.  i,  two  or  three  ;  ist  Aries,  20. 
seven,  or  at  least  three,  besides  the  metropolitan  ;  Nicene  4,  all  compro- 
vincials,  if  possible, — if  not,  three  at  least,  having  the  written  consent  of 
the  others  ;  2nd  Aries,  5,  the  metropolitan  or  three  comprovincials  ;  with 
(2)  the  cases  in  which  a  consecration  by  two  bishops,  or  even  by  one  only, 
was  held  valid,  though  irregular, — e.  g.  the  case  of  Siderius  of  Palaebisca, 


to  Augustine's  Questions.  67 

while  you  are  its  only  bishop,  you  cannot  consecrate  save 
in  the  absence  of  other  bishops.  For  you  cannot  expect 
Gallic  bishops  to  come  over  as  witnesses  on  such  occasions  ^.' 
(It  is  observable  that  Gregory  here  ignores  the  British 
Celtic  bishops,  to  whom  the  next  question  in  part  refers.) 
But  it  would  be  well,  in  planting  new  sees,  to  take  care 
that  they  were  not  too  far  apart  ^,  so  that  Augustine  might 
easily  have  the  benefit  of  his  brethren's  attendance  at  con- 
secrations in  the  future.  He  alludes  to  the  ordinary  social 
custom  whereby  married  persons  were  invited  to  a  wedding, 
to  sympathize  with  the  parties  concerned :  similarly,  he 
says,  at  a  consecration,  such  persons  should  meet  as  might 
rejoice  in  the  elevation  of  the  new  bishop,  or  pray  to  God 
for  his  preservation.  Again,  Augustine  had  asked,  '  How 
ought  I  to  deal  with  the  bishops  of  Gaul  and  Britain  % ' 
The  question  as  to  the  former  may  seem  to  show  some 

recognized  as  a  bishop  by  St.  Athanasius,  and  of  Evagrius,  recognized 
by  Kome  and  Alexandria — see  Bingham,  b.  ii.  c.  ii.  s.  5 — we  must  infer 
that  though  the  rule  in  question  was  very  ancient,  and  even  Novatian, 
in  the  third  century,  took  care  to  observe  it  (Eus.  vi.  43%  yet  it  was 
intended  to  guard  against  disorderly  and  clandestine  consecrations,  and 
its  observance  was  not  deemed  a  '  sine  qua  non '  for  the  conferring  of  the 
episcopal  character.  Gregory's  illustration  from  a  wedding-pai-ty  is  signi- 
ficant on  this  point.  Cp.  Bp.  Forbes,  SS.  Kinian  and  Kentigern,  p.  336. 
In  the  Scotic  Churches  consecration  by  one  bishop  was  not  unfrequent  : 
see  Lanigan,  ii.  128.  Palmer,  who  denies  the  validity  of  such  consecra- 
tions save  in  absolute  necessity,  cites  Habertus  that  in  *  ancient  MSS.'  the 
reading  is,  '  Nisi  cum  episcopis*  instead  of  *  nisi  sine  episcopis  ' ;  On  the 
Church,  ii.  321.     But  this  would  make  no  sense. 

^  So  in  Bede's  text  the  sense  is,  '  For  when  do  bishops  come  from  Gaul 
to  be  present  at  a  bishop's  consecration  ? '  (*  qui  . .  .  adsistant  ? ').  In  the 
Benedictine  text  it  is,  *  For  when  bishops  come  from  Gaul,  illi  .  .  . 
adsistent,' 

"^  The  next  sentence  in  Bede's  text  (the  Benedictine  is  clearly  made  up) 
is  corrupt  somehow.  *  Quatenus  nulla  sit  necessitas.  ut  in  ordinatione 
episcopi  pa  stores  quoque  alii,  quorum  praesentia  valde  est  utilis,  facile 
debeant  convenire.'  The  'necessity'  cannot  be  that  of  summoning 
bishops  from  Gaul  to  assist  at  a  consecration  in  Britain,  for  this  had  been 
ruled  out  of  the  question,  and  *  quorum,'  &c.,  can  hardly  mean  'though 
their  presence  would  be  useful.'  Mr.  Plummer  boldly  suggests  the 
omission  of  'nulla  sit  necessitas  ut,'  so  as  to'make  it  mean,  'in  order  that 
other  pastors  may  easily  come  together.'  It  would  be  simpler  to  take 
'  quatenus .  .  .  necessitas '  parenthetically,  in  the  sense  of  '  where  there 
is  no  necessity  for  planting  sees  far  apart.*  But  in  either  case  we  should 
have  expected  '  valeant '  rather  than  '  debeant.' 

F  1 


CHAP.  ir. 


68  Gregory^ s  Answers 

CHAP.  II.  ignorance,  possibly  a  touch  of  self-importance.  Gregory 
answered  decisively,  that,  as  bishop  of  the  English,  Augustine 
could  have  no  manner  of  jurisdiction  in  Gaul.  Should  he 
visit  that  country,  he  might  give  brotherly  counsel  to  the 
bishop  of  Aries,  who  had  received  the  '  pall '  from  Gregory's 
predecessor,  and  must  not  be  interfered  with  in  his  (metro- 
politan) authority:  the  Pope  had  directed  him  to  confer 
with  Augustine  ^,  and  Augustine  might  do  a  good  work  by 
'  persuading '  the  Gallic  bishops  to  correct  abuses  ^,  and 
setting  them  a  good  example  ;  but  more  than  this  he  could 
not  have  a  right  to  do.  Here  we  must  ask,  What  was  the 
pall,  and  what  did  it  indicate  ?  The  ancient  garment  called 
kiniation,  square-shaped  and  blanket-like,  which  was  worn 
over  the  tunic  in  ancient  Greece,  may  be  identified  with 
the  *  pallium,'  or  cloak,  which  TertuUian  commends  as  more 
convenient  than  the  toga  ^.  Such  a  garb  might  be  of  plain 
or  of  rich  materials  :  the  coarse  '  pallium  ^  '  of  philosophers 
was  retained  by  scholars  who  became  Christians,  and 
adopted  by  Christian  ascetics :  Alexandrian  bishops  in  the 
fifth  century  wore  a  white  woollen  scarf  round  the  neck, 
called  an  '  omophorion  ^/  apparently  a  diminished  pallium 

^  Ep.  xi,  68 ;  Bede,  i.  28.  It  is  dated  on  the  same  day  as  the  rest.  It 
directs  Virgilius  to  avail  himself  of  the  help  of  '  our  common  brother 
Augustine,'  if  he  should  visit  Aries,  for  the  correction  of  '  offences  of  priests 
or  others.'  For,  says  Gregory  significantly,  'it  often  happens  that  those 
who  are  at  a  distance  are  the  first  to  understand  what  has  to  be  set 
right  by  others.' 

^  Such  as  simony,  promotion  of  laymen  to  the  episcopate,  disuse  of 
synodical  action,  &c.     Virgilius  is  blamed  for  negligence,  Ep.  ix.  114. 

^  Tertull.  de  Pallio,  5.  It  was  a  loose  garment,  which  might  be  so  worn 
as  to  leave  the  breast  or  arm  bare,  or  to  conceal  the  whole  person  (hence 
'palliate').  See  the  catacomb  painting  found  in  the  cemetery  of  St. 
Callistus,  in  which  a  man  clad  in  the  pallium,  but  with  shoulder  and  breast 
bare,  extends  his  hands  towards  bread  and  fish  on  a  tripod  ;  Northcote 
and  Brownlow,  Roma  Sotterranea,  p.  267,  plate  14. 

*  Also  called  rpiffajv,  Soc.  iii.  r.  It  was  worn  by  Justin  (Euseb.  iv.  11) 
and  Heraclas  (Euseb.  vi.  19).  Nepotian,  a  presbj^ter,  wore  it  until  his  last 
moments  ;  Jerome,  Ep.  60,  13.  Salvian  describes  a  monk's  usual  appear- 
ance by  '  palliatum' ;  Gub.  Dei,  viii.  4.  The  first  Council  of  Orleans  uses 
'pallium  accepisse  *  as  equivalent  to  monastic  profession,  c.  21  ;  Mansi, 
viii.  355.     Cp.  Diet.  Chr.  Antiq.  ii.  1547. 

^  See  the  story  of  Theophilus  of  Alexandria  passionately  throwing  his 
omophorion  round  Ammonius'  neck,  as  if  to  throttle  him ;  Palladius,  Vit. 
Chrys.  p.  54.     Symeon  of  Thessalonica  describes  the  omophorion  as  en- 


to  Augustine's  Questions.  69 

(the  original  shape,  that  of  a  cloak,  is  thought  to  have  chap.  ir. 
survived  in  the  West  in  the  fifth  century  ^).  But  a  rich 
form  of  this  garment  became  part  of  the  Imperial  attire, 
and  was  granted  by  emperors,  as  a  mark  of  honour,  to 
patriarchs^:  then  the  popes  began,  originally  in  the 
emperor's  name  ^  or  by  his  desire,  to  *  allow  the  use  of 
the  pall '  to  certain  bishops, —to  those  who  represented  the 
*  Apostolic  see,'  or  to  some  metropolitans,  or  to  other  pre- 
lates of  influence  and  distinction*.  In  Gregory's  time  it 
was  thus  variously  granted  :  his  language  shows  that  it  was 
rich,  and  heavy  with  ornament  ^ :  the  wearer  was  to  guard 
against  self-complacency  ^ ;  it  was  not  to  be  worn  except  at 
mass  '^.  Although  in  several  cases  it  was  an  accompaniment 
of  metropolitan  dignity,  it  did  not  become  a  necessary  badge 
of  that  dignity  until  a  later  stage  in  the  development  of 
Papalism^.     Now   to   return  to  the  letter;  Gregory  says 

circling  the  shoulders  before  and  behind  ;  De  Templo  et  Missa,  ap.  Goar, 
Euchol.  p.  220.  Compare  also  Liberatus'  account  of  the  '  pall  of  St.  Mark,' 
Breviar.  20.  All  Eastern  '  orthodox  '  bishops  now  wear  an  omophorion  of 
silk  ;  they  lay  it  aside  at  the  gospel,  and  resume  it  before  communion  ; 
see  Goar,  147,  305.  Cp.  Neale,  Introd.  East,  Ch.  i.  312.  Armenian  bishops 
assume  it  before  the  offertory,  and  take  it  off  shortly  before  the  anaphora  ; 
Brightman,  Liturgies  East,  and  West.  i.  417,  430,  592.  Its  ends  hang 
down  before  and  behind. 

^  Life  of  St.  German,  p.  244,  The  word  is  also  used  for  a  woman's  cloak, 
Greg.  Tur.  H,  Fr.  iii.  29,  and  for  a  silk  cloak  for  men,  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  8, 
and  in  Adamn.  Vit.  Col.  iii.  i  as  an  equivalent  '  for  peplum  '  and  *  sagum.' 

2  Collier,  i.  160 ;  Eobertson,  Hist.  Ch.  iv.  133,  and  Growth  of  Papal 
Power,  p.  121.  Valentinian  III  gave  a  pallium  of  white  wool  to  the 
bishop  of  Ravenna  ;  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  her  Invaders,  i.  485. 

^  See  Greg.  Ep.  i.  28,  ix.  11.  Pope  Vigilius  would  not  grant  the  pall  to 
the  archbishop  of  Aries  until  he  gained  the  emperor's  consent.  See 
Duchesne,  p.  371. 

*  Note  of  Bened.  Edit,  on  Ep.  ix.  11.  Gregoiy  sends  it  to  the  bishop  of 
Corinth  ;  Ep.  v.  57.     See  forms  in  Liber  Diurnus  Pontif.  no.  45  ff. 

'"  Ep.  iii.  56  ;  v.  53  ;  vi.  9.     His  own  pall  was  mediocre  ;  John  Diac.  iv.  84, 

*  Ep.  iv.  I  ;  v.  II  ;  ix.  125. 

''  Ep.  iii.  56  ;  v.  56.  Gregory  objected  to  its  being  worn  in  penitential 
processions.  Alcuin  exhorts  the  archbishop  of  York  not  to  wear  his  pall 
save  when  attended  by  deacons  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  503. 

*  See  Robertson,  Hist.  Ch.  iv.  133.  Duchesne  says  that,  before  being 
sent,  it  was  kept  for  a  night  '  in  the  sanctuary  of  the  confession,'  close  to 
the  tomb  of  St.  Peter  :  from  this  it  was  a  short  step  to  the  idea  of  a  kind 
of  transmission  of  power,  so  that  the  pall  'devenait  ainsi  le  signe  naturel 
d'une  juridiction  superieure/  but  it  was  not  until  the  alliance  between  the 


70  Gregory^ s  Answers 

CHAP.  II.  of  the  British  bishops,  in  contrast  to  the  Gallic,  that  they 
are  all  committed  to  the  care  and  authority  of  Augustine. 
Herein  he  was  asserting  a  claim  which  those  bishops,  as 
we  shall  see  ere  long,  would  not  admit.  They  recognized 
the  honorary  primacy  of  Rome,  but  did  not  deem  them- 
selves under  subjection  to  its  supremacy^.  Gregory  relied 
on  the  '  apostolic'  prerogatives  of  the  'see  of  Peter '  through- 
out the  West,  not  to  speak  of  Eastern  Christendom.  Had. 
he  been  reminded  that  the  eighth  canon  of  the  Council  of 
Ephesus  had  forbidden  any  bishop  to  assume  power  over 
any  province  that  had  not  originally  been  under  his  juris- 
diction ^,  and  that  Britain  was  properly  outside  the  Roman 
patriarchate  '^,  he  would  doubtless  have  fallen  back  on  the 
inherent  supremacy  of  his  see.  Vehement  as  were  his 
protests  against  the  adoption  by  another  patriarch,  or  the 

pope  and  the  Carolingian  house  that  metropolitans  were  obliged  to  accept 
it,  &c.     Origines  du  Culte,  p.  372, 

^  Lingard  contests  this,  and  says  that  Gregory  had  evidently  no  expecta- 
tion that  the  British  bishops  would  assert  independence  ;  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  380. 
But  Gregory,  after  the  manner  of  Popes,  would  take  for  granted  that 
a  claim  made  in  the  name  of  St.  Peter  would  succeed.  Lingard  puts 
a  manifest  force  on  some  words  of  Gildas'  'Increpatio'  to  clergy;  and 
argues,  as  to  earlier  times,  as  if  the  burden  of  proof  did  not  lie  with  those 
who  hold  that  the  British  Church  was  from  the  first  subject  to  Rome. 
He  assumes  also  that  the  influence  of  the  Roman  see  over  Gaul  would 
imply  a  parallel  influence  over  Britain  ;  p.  375.  In  the  synodal  letter  of 
the  Council  of  Aries,  '  majores  dioeceses '  probably  means  the  provinces 
nearest  to  Rome. 

^  '  That  none  of  the  bishops  shall  take  possession  of  a  province  that  was 
not  from  the  first  and  originally  under  his  hand  or  that  of  his  predecessors  ; 
and  that  if  any  one  has  taken  possession  of  such,  or  has  subjected  it  to 
himself  by  force,  he  shall  restore  it,  in  order  that  the  rules  of  the  fathers 
may  not  be  transgressed,  and  the  arrogance  of  (secular)  authority  may  not 
come  in  unawares  under  the  pretence  of  priestly  action,  and  we  may  not 
by  degrees  and  unconsciously  lose  the  liberty  which  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
the  liberator  of  all  men,  gave  us  by  His  own  blood.  Therefore  it  is  the 
pleasure  of  the  holy  oecumenical  synod  that  to  each  province  be  preserved 
pure  and  inviolate  the  rights  belonging  to  it  from  the  beginning,'  &c. 
Mansi,  iii.  1469. 

2  The  Roman  patriarchate,  properly  speaking,  included  the  ten  pro- 
vinces which  were  civilly  under  the  Vicarius  Urbis,  i.  e.  Italy  south  of  the 
*  Italic  dioecese,'  with  the  three  adjacent  islands  ;  the  churches  of  this 
region  being  called  'suburbicary.*  Thus  Africa,  Spain,  Gaul,  and  Britain 
were  not  originally  within  the  Roman  'patriarchate.'  See  Bingham, 
b.  ix.  c.  I.  s.  gff.  ;  Palmer  on  the  Church,  ii.  416;  and  the  writer's 
'  Notes  on  Canons  of  First  Four  Councils,'  p.  12a. 


to  Augustine^ s  Questions.  71 

application  to  himself,  of  the  title  of  '  Universal  Bishop^,'  he  chap.  ir. 
always  acted  on  that  theory  respecting  his  own  office  which 
had  been  gradually  developing  itself  from  the  early  part  of 
the  fifth  century,  and  was  to  develop  itself  yet  more  in 
aftertimes,  Pope  after  Pope  '  never  retracting,  but  adopting 
and  uniformly  improving  upon  the  pretensions  of  their 
predecessors  ^.'  This  system  Gregory  inherited,  believed  in 
it  firmly,  acted  on  it  persistently^:  his  virtues,  in  fact, 
recommended  and  fortified  what  was  in  itself,  and  as  judged 
by  the  light  of  genuine  Catholic  tradition,  nothing  better 
than  a  gradual  corruption,  by  excess,  of  the  ecclesiastical 
polity  of  the  first  ages.  It  would  be  most  unjust  to  compare 
him  to  a  Gregory  VII  or  Innocent  III,  to  Martin  V  or  to 
Pius  IX ;  yet  the  line  which  he  took  was  preparing  the 
way  for  such  successors,  and  formed  an  element  in  the 
process  by  which  an  indefinite  precedency  and  a  limited 
patriarchate  were,  in  effect,  to  be  superseded  by  a  claim  to 
dominion  at  once  oecumenic  in  its  scope  and  autocratic  in  its 
character.  The  result  to  the  English  Church  was,  that  it 
became  more  and  more  dependent  on  Rome.  While  Gregory 
was  perfectly  in  his  rights  in  occupying  the  ground  which 
British  bishops  had  abandoned;  while  gratitude  for  the 
sending  of  Augustine,  and  again  afterwards  for  the  appoint- 
ment of  Theodore, — the  results  of  which  tended  to  obscure 
the  amount  of  non-Roman  mission-work  done  among  the 
English, — naturally  led  the  English  Church,  when  organized, 
to  lean  to  Rome  as  colonists  look  to  a  mother-country,  with- 
out raising  questions  as  to  what  the  Roman  Church  might 

^  Greg.  Ep.  v.  i8,  19,  20,  43  ;  vii.  31,  33  ;  viii.  30  ;  ix.  68.  He  calls  the 
title  new,  foolish,  frivolous,  proud,  perverse,  wicked,  blasphemous,  anti- 
christian.  His  indignation  is  sharpened  by  jealousy  of  the  see  of  Constan- 
tinople, a  jealousy  not  unmixed  with  apprehension  as  to  the  advantages 
enjoyed  by  the  emperor's  own  patriarch  (cf.  Hodgkin,  iii.  150)  ;  and  he 
strains  the  title  beyond  what  its  use  in  the  East  implied,  e.  g.  *  Si  unus, 
ut  putat,  universalis  est,  restat  ut  vos  episcopi  non  sitis  ; '  ix.  68. 

"^  Hussey's  Rise  of  the  Papal  Power,  p.  149.  See  Church's  Misc.  Essays, 
p.  255,  against  '  the  popular  controversial  use  of  Gregory's  condemnation 
of  the  title.' 

^  See  e.  g.  the  celebrated  letter  to  Desiderius  of  Vienne  about  his  lectur- 
ing on  '  grammar,'  Ep.  xi.  54.  In  ix.  59  he  says  broadly  that  he  knows 
not  what  bishop,  in  case  of  misconduct,  is  not  subject  to  tlie  apostolic  see. 
See  Church,  Misc.  Essays,  p.  256. 


72  Question  of  Miracles. 

CHAP.  n.  in  strictness  claim  on  account  of  these  great  services^ — a  yet 
stronger  tie  to  Rome  was  formed  by  that  current  and  grow- 
ingly  dominant  exaggeration  of  a  primacy  into  supremacy, 
under  the  influence  of  which  it  seemed  a  religious  duty  to 
regard  the  chair  of  St.  Peter  as  the  one  centre  of  unity, 
and,  more  than  that,  as  the  permanent  seat  of  decisive 
authority,  for  the  universal  Church  of  Christ. 

We  may  say  of  Augustine's  questions,  taken  altogether, 
and  includinof  some  which  referred  to  matters  of  ceremonial 
purity,  that  they  illustrate  his  monastic  inexperience  of 
pastoral  administration,  and  also,  perhaps,  indicate  a  certain 
want  of  elevation  of  character.  They  are  hardly,  at  an^^ 
rate,  the  questions  which  a  great  mind  would  have  found 
it  necessary  to  refer  to  a  distant  superior ;  in  fact,  some  of 
them  give  the  notion  of  a  mind  cramped  by  long  seclusion, 
and  somewhat  helpless  when  set  to  act  in  a  wide  sphere. 
Other  questions  may  occur  to  us,  as  naturally  arising  in 
presence  of  spiritual  interests  and  requirements  so  vast  and 
so  absorbing:  but  Augustine  does  not  propound  them. 
One  feels  a  sort  of  chill,  a  sensation  akin  to  disappointment, 
and  even  to  repulsion,  in  reading  of  his  '  difficulties  2.' 

stories  of  A  letter  of  which  Bede  ^  gives  a  fragment,  and  which 
was  probably  written  earlier,  though  sent  at  the  time*, 
was  intended,  in  great  part,  as  a  warning  against  spiritual 
elation.  It  brings  us  in  front  of  a  question  which  mediaeval 
narratives  perforce  suggest.  Gregory  had  heard  from 
Augustine's  messengers  that  miracles  had  been  wrought 
by  his  means  among  the  English.     Now,  of  the  mediaeval 

^  See  Bp.  Wordsworth,  Theoph.  Anglic,  p.  140. 

2  In  the  Benedictine  text  of  Gregory,  the  questions  are  broken  up  into 
eleven  ;  and  there  is  also  a  request  for  relics  of  St.  Sixtus,  which  is 
probably  an  after-addition. 

3  Bede,  i.  31.  The  entire  letter  is  in  Ep.  xi.  28.  It  begins,  *  Gloria  in 
excelsis  ....  quia  granum  frumenti  mortuum  est  cadens  in  terram,  ne 
solum  regnaret  in  coelo.  .  .  .  Who  can  describe  the  joy  that  has  arisen  in 
the  hearts  of  all  the  faithful  here,  quod  gens  Anglorum  .  .  .  sanctae  fidei 
luce  perfusa  est  ? ' 

*  Both  this  letter  and  the  '  Replies '  were  probably  written,  though  not 
sent,  before  601  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  32.  The  order  in  which  the 
letters  (in  Bede)  should  be  read  is  as  follows :  i.  *Scio,  frater,'  &c.,  i.  31  ; 
2.  <  Quantus  sit,'  i.  28 ;  3.  the  '•  Replies ' ;  4.  '  Cum  certum  sit,'  i.  29 ; 
5.  *  Propter  hoc,'  &c.,  i.  32  ;  6.  '  Post  discessum,'  &c.,  i.  30. 


miracles. 


Question  of  Miracles.  73 

stories  of  miracles  the  great  bulk  may  be  summarily  dis- 
missed,— not  merely,  nor  indeed  mainly,  because  of  the 
contrast  which  so  many  of  them  present,  by  their  grotesque- 
ness,  or  puerility,  or  matter-of-course  profusion,  to  the 
*  signs'  recorded  in  Scripture^,  but  because  the  interval 
between  the  alleged  occurrence  and  the  account  of  it  is 
usually  long  enough  to  allow  of  a  rank  upgrowth  of  legend, 
encouraged  by  the  fixed  preconception  of  the  age,  that 
miracles  must  always  attend  upon,  and  attest,  high  sanctity. 
Such  an  interval,  for  instance,  is  found  in  the  case  of  the 
marvels  connected  with  St.  Alban.  But  in  other  cases  w^e 
have  something  like  contemporary  evidence ;  yet,  even  here, 
deductions  must  be  made  for  that  craving  after  wonders  ^ 
which  would  not  think  of  sifting  testimony^,  if  not  also 
for  that  strange  mixture  of  belief  and  untruthfulness  which 
tempted  men— especially  if  any  selfish  end  could  be  served 
— to  promote  a  cause  by  inventing  fresh  samples  of  that 
supernatural  vindication,  which  they  never  doubted  it  to 
have  received  in  times  and  circumstances  parallel  to  their 
own.  To  these  considerations  must  be  added  the  obvious 
intrinsic  difierence  between  the  miraculous  elements  in  the 

^  Take,  for  instance,  the  legends  of  St.  Teilo  and  St.  Oudoceus,  as  given 
in  the  Liber  Landavensis  ;  and  see  Trench  on  Miracles,  p.  47. 

2  See  the  judicious  remarks  of  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  loi  if.  Sometimes 
an  ordinary,  or  at  least  a  clearly  natural  occurrence,  is  not  embellished 
by  miraculous  adjuncts,  but  simply  assumed  to  be  supernatural  :  as  when 
Cuthbert,  suffering  from  a  swollen  knee,  and  lying  in  the  open  air,  is 
advised  by  a  horseman  in  white  to  apply  a  poultice  of  wheaten  flour 
boiled  in  milk,  which  proves  efficacious,  whereupon  'agnovit  angelum 
fuisse.'  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  2.  See  too  the  stories  about  animals,  as  the 
two  otters  in  Vit.  Cuthb.  10.  Comp.  Chr.  Remembr.  Jan.  1852,  p.  83  : 
'Bede  regarded  as  miraculous,  and  called  a  miracle,  what  we  neither 
regard  nor  call  so.'  Comp.  Hardwick,  Ch.  Hist.,  M.  Ages,  p.  113.  See 
Barmby,  Gregory  the  Great,  p.  117:  'Most  of  the  incidents  on  record, 
supposed  to  be  miraculous,  may  now  be  accounted  for  by  the'  then 
'prevalent  state  of  feeling  and  expectancy,'  &c.  Gregory  himself,  as 
his  'Dialogues'  show,  'was  predisposed  to  interpret  every  marvellous 
incident  as  a  special  harbinger  of  the  Second  Advent ; '  Owen  on  Dogm. 
Theol.  p.  312. 

^  It  must,  however,  be  remembered  that  Bede  is  often  careful  to 
mention  his  informant  and  attest  his  credibility  ;  see  Vit.  Cuthb.  5,  36  ; 
H.  E.  iii.  13,  19  ;  iv.  25,  31,  32  ;  v.  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  13.  Lingard  says,  'Bede 
relates  several  wonderful  events,  but  not  one  on  his  own  knowledge ; ' 
A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  103. 


74  Question  of  Miracles. 

;hap.  11.  New  Testament  narrative,  professedly  connected,  as  they 
are,  with  the  inauguration  of  a  revelation,  and  the  luxuriant 
and  often  fantastic  thaumaturgy  which  confronts  us  in 
mediaeval  books.  At  the  same  time,  no  serious  believer 
in  Christianity  will  fail  to  disentangle  the  question  of 
mediaeval  miracles  from  the  so-called  scientific  presup- 
position, which  would  put  the  '  signs '  or  '  mighty  works ' 
of  the  Gospel  itself  out  of  court  as  ipso  facto  impossible. 
It  is  a  question  of  evidence;  a  very  acute  writer  on 
Christian  evidences  has  said  that  'we  reject  the  mass  of 
later  miracles  because  they  want  evidence,  not  because  our 
argument  obliges  us  to  reject  all  later  miracles,  whether 
they  have  evidence  or  not  ^ : '  and  a  great  Christian  historian 
has  not  hesitated  to  avow  his  belief  that '  with  regard  to 
some  miracles,  there  is  no  strong  a  priori  improbability  in 
their  occurrence,  but  rather  the  contrary ;  as,  for  instance, 
where  the  first  missionaries  of  the  Gospel  in  a  barbarous 
country  are  said  to  have  been  assisted  by  a  manifestation 
of  the  Spirit  of  power;  and  if  the  evidence  appears  to 
warrant '  our  '  belief,'  we  may  '  readily  and  gladly  yield  it, 
.  .  .  most  thankful  to  find  sufficient  grounds  for  believing 
that  not  only  at  the  beginning  of  the  Gospel,  but  in  ages 
long  afterwards,  believing  prayer  has  received  extraordinary 
answers  ^.'  Augustine  was  not  the  man,  we  may  well  think, 
to  impose  on  Gregory  by  an  account  which  was  a  fraud. 
Some  things  evidently  did  happen,  in  relation  to  his  con- 
verts, which  he  took  to  be  miraculous :  what  they  were,  we 
know  not :  but  if,  at  such  a  time,  and  amid  such  a  work, 
he  received  some  signal  answers  to  prayer,  that  can  be  no 
difficulty  to  believers  in  the  GospeP.  Gregory's  warning,  at 
once  tender  and  thoughtful,  has  the  true  Gospel  mark  upon 
it.  He  reminds  his  '  dearest  brother '  that  Christ  bade  the 
Seventy  rejoice,  not  in  their  power  over  the  spirits,  but 

^  Mozley,  Bamp.  Lect.  p.  229. 

^  Arnold's  Lectures  on  Mod.  Hist.  p.  133.  He  adds,  *  If  we  think  that, 
supposing  the  miracle  to  be  true,  it  gives  the  seal  of  God's  approbation  to 
all  the  belief  of  him  who  performed  it,  this  is  manifestly  a  most  hasty 
and  untenable  inference.'  Cp.  Bishop  Browne's  Lessons  from  Early 
English  Ch.  Hist.  pp.  19-21. 

3  See  Christlieb,  Mod.  Doubt  and  Christian  Belief,  E.  Tr.  p.  33a. 


Scheme  for  Bishoprics.  75 

rather  that  their  names  were  written  in  heaven ;  that  the  chap.  n. 
grace  which  is  open  to  all  is  better  than  the  gifts  entrusted 
to  a  few,  and  ought  to  be  the  subject  of  a  deeper  joy  than 
could  be  caused  by  any  individual  endowment  ^ ;  that  such 
gifts  carried  with  them  a  special  temptation  to  spiritual 
self-confidence,  and  that  their  possessor  should  make  them 
an  occasion  for  self-scrutiny  and  deepened  penitence,  and 
regard  them  as,  in  effect,  bestowed  not  on  himself,  but  on 
those  for  whose  benefit  they  had  been  given.  'I  have 
a  sure  hope,'  he  proceeds,  in  a  part  of  the  letter  which 
Bede  omits,  '  that  your  sins  are  already  forgiven,  and  that 
you  are  a  chosen  instrument  for  bringing  others  to  the 
same  mercy  ^.' 

A  third  letter,  sent  with  the  others^,  informed  Augustine  Scheme 
that  he  would  receive  with  it  a  pall,  to  be  used  only  in  ^^^^^  ^^  ^^*^^ 
the   celebration  of  mass.     This  was,  for  him,  a  token  of 
archiepiscopal  jurisdiction ;    but    in   the   exercise  of  that 
jurisdiction,  Gregory  seems   to    have  thought   of   him  as 
seated    permanently  in  London  *.      For   he   contemplates,  Plan  for 
with  a  sanguine  hopefulness  as  to  the  probable  extent  of  tiJ^^f^'^ 
the  missionary  successes,  the  formation  of  twelve  dioceses  English 
to  be  subject   to  Augustine  as  metropolitan,  'so  that  the 
bishop  of  London' — meaning  evidently  the   successor   of 
Augustine — '  might  in  future  be  always  consecrated  by  his 
own  synod '  of  suffragans,  over  whom  he  was  to  preside  as 
archbishop.    Further,  Augustine  was  to  consecrate  a  bishop 
for  York, — here  Gregory's  thoughts  went  back  to  '  Deira,' — 
and  if  that  city  and  the  parts  near  it  should  receive  the 
word  of  God,  that  bishop  should   also  consecrate  twelve 
suffragans^,  and  act  as  their  metropolitan;    for  Gregory 

^  Comp.  Greg.  Dial.  i.  2,  '  Ego  virtutem  patientiae  signis  et  miraculia 
majorem  credo;'  ib.  1.  12,  *Vitae  vera  aestimatio  in  virtute  est  operum, 
non  in  ostensione  signorum  ;'  and  ib.  iii.  17,  that  spiritual  miracles 
transcend  physical. 

"^  'If,'  he  concludes,  'there  is  joy  in  heaven  over  one  penitent,  what 
must  there  be  over  a  penitent  nation  !  .  .  .  Let  us  then  say,  let  us  all  say, 
Gloria  in  excelsis  ! ' 

'  Bede,  i.  29  ;  Greg.  Ep.  xi.  65. 

*  Thus  it  was  not  Gregoiy,  but  the  ecclesiastical  and  civil  authorities 
of  England,  who  established  the  southern  archbishopric  at  Canterbury. 

'  See  Bede,  Ep.  to  Egb.  5.     '  The  parts  near  York '  would,  in  Gregory's 


76  Scheme  for  Bishoprics. 

CHAP.  II.  intended,  if  he  lived  (he  did  not  then  think  he  should  live 
much  longer  ^),  to  send  him  also  a  pall.  Augustine,  for  his 
life,  was  in  this  case  to  be  supreme  over  the  northern 
metropolitan;  'we  will  that  he  should  be  subject  to  your 
control : '  but  after  Augustine's  death  the  metropolitans  of 
London  and  York  were  to  be  independent  of  each  other, 
acting  in  concert  ^,  and  taking  precedence  according  to 
seniority.  Gregory  reiterated  his  intention  to  place  all 
the  bishops  in  Britain  under  Augustine's  personal  super- 
vision; 'that  from  the  tongue  and  life  of  your  Holiness 
they  may  receive  the  rule  of  believing  rightly  and  living 
well.'  The  scheme  drawn  out,  symmetrical  and  theo- 
retically satisfactory  as  it  was,  remained  a  paper-scheme 
only:  the  fair  vision  of  twelve  bishops  under  Augustine, 
and  twelve  more  under  a  bishop  sent  by  him  to  York, 
was  not  realized.  Canterbury,  of  which  Gregory  took  no 
account,  remained  the  seat  of  the  archbishopric,  for  the 
sufficient  reason  that  London,  as  we  shall  see  presently, 
could  not  for  long  years  be  regarded  as,  in  any  real  sense, 
Christian.  Augustine  himself  did  not  succeed  in  settling 
more  than  tivo  bishoprics ;  and  it  was  in  the  time  of  his 
third  successor  that  York  became  an  English  see. 
Gregory's  Beside  the  pall,  Gregory  sent  a  supply  of  sacred  '  vessels  ^' 
^  altar-cloths*,  and   church-furniture,  with  vestments^  for 

priests  and  clerics,  relics  of  the  Apostles  and  martyrs^, 
and  also  a  great   number  of  manuscripts.     The  monastic 

mind,  include  a  large  part  of  Scotland.  See  Freeman,  Norm.  Conq. 
iv.  349. 

^  See  Ep.  xi.  33,  '  Me  proximum  morti  video.' 

^  '  Communi  consilio  et  concordi  actione  quaeque  sunt  pro  Christi  zelo 
agenda,'  &c.     Documents  were  forged  to  set  this  aside. 

2  See  Greg.  Ep.  i.  68,  *  in  argento  calicos  duos.' 

*  See  Ep.  i.  68,  where  'pallia'  is  thus  used,  and  Dial.  i.  10  for  the 
'sindon'  on  the  altar.  Gregory  of  Tours  speaks  of  the  altar  and  the 
oblations  being  covered  ' pallio serico ' ;  H.  Fr.  vii.'  22.  Cp.  the  'pallium  ' 
and  *  corporale '  in  the  Ordo  Romanus,  Duchesne,  p.  443. 

^  See  Ep.  vii.  40,  *  duo  oraria  : '  Dial.  i.  9,  '  episcopus  .  .  .  elevatis 
manibus  ext«nso  vestimento : '  ib.  iv.  40  on  a  deacon's  dalmatic.  See 
Elmham,  p.  99,  on  six  ancient  copes  at  St.  Augustine's. 

•  See  Ep.  iii.  19;  iv.  30;  vi.  49,  50;  ix.  15.  The  monks  of  St. 
Augustine's  believed  that  this  gift  of  relics  included  a  part  of  *  Aaron's 
rod';  Elmham,  p.  102.     Cp.  forms  in  Liber  Diurnus,  no.  16  ff. 


Letters  to  Ethelbert  and  Bertha.  77 

chronicler^  recites  a  long  list  of  these  'first-fruits  of  the  chaj*.  ir. 
books  of  the  whole  Church  of  England/  including  a  '  Gre- 
gorian Bible '  in  two  volumes,  two  copies  of  the  Gospels  2, 
two  Psalters,  a  book  on  the  Apostles'  lives  and  deaths, 
a  Passionary  or  Martyrology,  an  exposition  of  the  Epistles 
and  Gospels  for  several  Sundays,  all  adorned  with  silver 
or  jewels,  and  carefully  preserved  in  St.  Augustine's  abbey. 
But  we  cannot  be  sure  that  all  these  treasured  volumes, 
four  of  which  were  kept  above  the  high  altar  itself,  were 
veritable  '  libri  Gregoriani.' 

To  the  same  date  belong  two  letters  which  Gregory 
addressed  to  Ethelbert  and  Bertha.  He  exhorts  the  former^, 
as  'set  over  the  English  race,'  with  'kings  and  peoples 
subject  to  him,'  to  follow  the  example  of  the  first  Christian 
Emperor,  and  to  second  with  royal  authority  Augustine's 
missionary  '  efforts ' :  and  he  particularly  advises  him  to 
put  down  idolatry,  and  to  destroy  its  temples^.  In  the 
letter  to  Bertha^,  some  gentle  rebuke  for  her  apparent 
tardiness  ^  in  the  good  work  is  blended  with  the  assurance 
that  what  she  had  at  last  done  has  made  the  Romans  pray 
for  her  long  life,  and  excited  interest  even  in  Constantinople. 
Let  her  take  Helena,  the  mother  of  Constantine,  for  a  model, 
and  make  up  for  past  neglect  by  greater  zeal  in  support  of 
the  mission.     Commendatory  letters  were   also   addressed 

^  Elmham,  Hist.  Monast.  S.  Aug.  pp.  96-99  (see  Introd.  p.  xxv). 

^  Two  MSS.  still  extant  liave  been  supposed  to  be  these  '  Text  us 
Evangeliorum.'  One  is  in  the  Bodleian ;  the  beginning  and  end  are  lost. 
It  lies  open  at  Mark  xv.  28,  et  adimpleta  est  scribtura  quae  digit  .  .  . 
But,  on  the  authority  of  the  late  Bodleian  Librarian,  H.  O.  Coxe,  it  may- 
be confidently  dated  some  fifty  years  later,  i.  e.  'circ.  650-700.*  Another, 
in  the  library  of  Corpus  Christi  College,  Cambridge,  is  thought  by 
Hardwick'  to  be  probably  a  'veritable  relic  of  St.  Gregory's  benefac- 
tion;' Pref  to  Elmham,  p.  xxvi.  Mr.  M.  Rule,  the  learned  editor  of  the 
Corpus  MS.  Missal,  '  of  St.  Augustine's  Abbey/  considers  it  to  be  based  on 
a  Gregorian  missal  brought  by  Augustine  from  Rome. 

'  Bede,  i.  32  ;  Ep.  xi.  66.  The  letter  contains  an  expression  of  his 
belief  that  Hhe  end  of  the  world  was  approaching'  (cp.  Ep.  iii.  29,  65; 
ix.  68 ;  Dial.  iv.  41).  If  the  troubles  that  are  to  herald  it  should  occur 
in  Ethelbert's  country,  let  him  not  be  disturbed  by  them. 

*  'Fanorum  aedificia.'     Comp.  Bede,  i.  30;  ii.  13,  15  ;  iii.  30. 

'  Ep.  xi.  29 :  not  in  Bede.  This  letter  is  not  dated,  but  is  evidently 
a  companion  letter  to  the  former. 

'  'Jamdudum  .  .  .  debuistis  .  .  .  Nee  tardum  .  .  .  debuit  esse  nee 
difficile  .  .  .  Agite  ut  .  .  .  possitis  quod  neglectum  est  reparare.' 


78  Treatment  of  Pagan  Temples, 

CHAP.  II.  to  eleven  Gallic  prelates  \  and  to  Theoderic,  Theodebert, 
Chlotair,  and  Brunhild.  One  of  these  letters  requested 
the  archbishop  of  Lyons  to  see  that  nothing  should  delay 
the  journey  of  the  four  monks  through  that  part  of  Gaul  ^. 
Some  weeks  passed  away :  Gregory  received  no  tidings 
Tr^tment  from  them,  and  became  anxious  about  their  safety.  He 
tf^mpies.  bad  also  time  to  reconsider  his  advice  ^  given  to  Ethelbert 
in  favour  of  the  destruction  of  Pagan  temples.  On  this 
subject  two  views  were  open:  in  the  fourth  century 
many  temples  were  overthrown  by  the  zeal  of  individual 
Christians,  and  some  acts  of  this  sort  in  the  reign  of 
Constantius  provoked  unsparing  reprisals  in  that  of 
Julian*.  As  Paganism  grew  weaker  in  the  latter  years 
of  that  century,  these  attacks  were  renewed  by  St.  Martin 
in  Gaul  ^,  by  Marcellus  of  Apamea  in  Syria  ^,  by  Theophilus 
at  Alexandria  '^.  Bishops  in  Africa  petitioned  the  Emperor 
that  such  temples  as  were  not  among  the  ornamental  build- 
ings of  cities  might  be  utterly  destroyed  ^ :  those  in  Rome 
itself,  according  to  Jerome,  were  'covered  with  dust  and 
cobwebs '  in  403  ^ ;  but  we  may  allow  for  his  characteristic 
exaggeration,  and  his  own  words  show  that  these  old 
fortresses  of  idolatry  had  not  been  levelled  to  the  ground 
when  the  whole  system  of  Pagan  worship  was  put  under 
the  ban  of  imperial  law  in  392,  several  years  after  the 
closing  of  temples  had  been  enforced  in  parts  of  the 
empire  ^0.     Gradually  the  temples  fell  into  ruin,  or  were 

^  Ep.  xi.  54-58. 

=*  Ep.  xi.  56.  This  letter  has  a  special  interest.  Gregory  tells  the 
archbishop  that  as  yet  he  has  searched  in  vain  for  the  writings  of 
St.  Irenaeus  (i.e.  the  Greek  original),  or  for  the  record  of  his  death. 

3  Plummer  thinks  it  not  certain.  But  surely  the  words  '  diu  mecum 
cogitans,'  just  after  the  sentence  about  his  having  expected  to  hear  from 
them,  are  decisive. 

*  See  the  case  of  Mark  of  Arethusa,  Soz.  v.  10  ;  Theodoret,  iii.  7. 

^  Snip.  Sev.,  Vit.  Mart.  13, — the  story  of  the 'ancient  temple  and  its 
adjacent  pine-tree. 

*  Theodoret,  v.  21.     Marcellus  had  the  support  of  the  prefect. 

'  Soc.  V.  16.     Theophilus  acted  under  special  orders  from  Theodosius. 
^  Cod.  Afric,  58 ;  Mansi.  iii.  766. 

®  Jerome,  Ep.  107.  i.     He  says  that  the  destniction  of  the  great  temple 
at  Gaza  was  continually  expected  ;  ib.  2. 
1"  See  Robertson,  Hist.  Ch.  i.  393  ff. 


Treatment  of  Pagan  Temples.  79 

pulled  down  under  authority,  or  converted  into  Christian  chap.  u. 
churches,  as  was  sometimes  the  case,  St.  Augustine  tells 
us,  in  Africa^.  And  to  this  latter  treatment  of  them 
Gregory,  on  reflection,  now  decidedly  inclined 2.  'They 
ought  by  no  means,'  so  he  wrote  in  a  letter  to  Mellitus  ^, 
'  to  be  destroyed : '  Mellitus  was  to  tell  Augustine,  when  he 
saw  him,  that  Gregory  desired  them,  if  solidly  built,  to  be 
cleansed  and  hallowed  for  Christian  worship.  The  people 
might  be  the  more  ready  to  attend  that  worship  if  it  were 
solemnized  in  places  which  they  had  formerly  frequented ; 
and  as  they  had  also  been  wont  to  hold  sacrificial  feasts  *, 
it  would  be  wise  to  provide  them  with  some  other  enjoy- 
ments by  way  of  compensation.  On  the  day  of  the 
dedication,  or  on  the  festivals  of  those  saints  whose  relics 
are  there  deposited,  let  the  converts  make  themselves 
'tabernacles'  with  boughs  of  trees ^  around  the  temples 
now  turned  into  churches,  and  there  kill  oxen,  no  longer 
in  '  sacrifice  to  devils,'  but  as  the  materials  of  their  meal, 
and  with  thanks  to  the  Giver  of  all  things  ^.  For,  he 
proceeds,  with  a  true    insight   into   the   need   of  patient 

*  Aug.  Ep.  47.  3  :  'vel  in  honorem  Dei  veri  convertuntur.*  See  Add. 
Notes,  A.  But  in  Bede  iii.  30  we  find,  '  ut  relictis  sive  destructis  fanis 
.  .  .  aperirent  ecclesias.' 

^  It  had  been  already  carried  out  as  to  a  temple  at  Novara  in  the  early 
part  of  the  sixth  century  :  see  Ennodius,  Dictio  2,  and  Carm.  ii.  ii : — 
'Perdidit  antiquum  quis  relligione  sacellum, 
Numinibus  pulsis  quod  bene  numen  habet?' 
So  also  in  the  case  of  the  circular  temple  of  Romulus  s»n  of  Maxentius, 
(on  the  north  side  of  the  Roman  Forum\  dedicated  in  527  by  Felix  III 
or   IV  to  SS.   Cosmas  and  Damian.     And  a  few  years  after  Gregoiy's 
death  it  was  carried  out  in  regard  to  the  Pantheon  of  Agrippa,  which 
became  a  church  of  St.  Mary  ad  Mariyres,  or,  as  Bede,  who  refers  to  this 
act    of  Boniface   IV,  describes   it,    ^Sanctae  Dei   genetricis  et  omnium 
martyrum  Christi ;'  ii.  4.     For  other  cases  in  Rome,  see  Lanciani,  Pagan 
and  Chr.  Rome,  p.  160. 

»  Bede,  i.  30.  <  Comp.  Greg.  Turon.  Vit.  Patr.  6.  2. 

'  Trees  were  often  directly  associated  with  idolatry.  See  the  passage 
in  Sulpicius,  above  referred  to  ;  and  on  the  custom  of  hanging  up  skulls 
of  slain  animals  on  a  pear-tree  in  Auxerre,  Constantius'  Vit.  S.  Germ.  i.  2. 
Cp.  Greg.  Ep.  viii.  18  ;  ix.  11. 

^  Gregory's  kind  heart  took  pleasure  in  helping  the  poor  to  enjoy 
themselves.  See  his  Ep.  i.  56  :  he  bids  a  subdeacon  furnish  to  some  poor 
people,  on  the  occasion  of  dedicating  a  monastic  oratory,  200  lambs,  100 
hens,  30  amphorae  of  wine,  &c., — '  and  charge  it  in  your  accounts.' 


8o  Treatment  of  Pagan  Temples, 

HAP.  II.  training  and  much  tolerance  for  such  rude  proselytes,  '  you 
cannot  cut  off  everything  at  once  from  rough  natures :  he 
who  would  climb  to  a  height  must  ascend  step  by  step,  he 
cannot  jump  the  whole  way  \'  Some  pleasures  permitted  to 
the  English  country  folk,  in  connexion  with  places  familiar 
from  their  earliest  remembrances,  and  now  associated  with 
their  new  belief,  might  be  really  helpful:  the  'outward 
enjoyment '  might  open  their  hearts  to  a  deeper  and 
a  spiritual  joy.  A  wise  and  a  hopeful  policy,  if  the  old 
scenes  and  the  old  usages  could  be  thus  effectually  cleared 
of  heathen  taint.  Probably  St.  Martin,  and  others  who  felt 
and  acted  like  him^,  would  have  demurred  to  the  possibility 
of  such  a  clearing:  and  the  intense  tenacity  of  heathen 
customs  in  mediaeval  Europe  might  be  urged  in  support 
of  their  severer  view  ^.     If  the  old  idol-fanes  were   left, 

^  'Quia  et  is  qui  sunimum  locum  ascendere  nititur,  gradibus  vel  passi- 
bus,  non  autem  saltibus,  elevatur/  Memorable  words,  which  might  be 
used  in  a  deeper  sense,  to  represent  the  momentous  principle  of  a  gradual 
Divine  education  of  humanity,  adapting  itself  to  the  fact  that  '  the 
natural  motion  of  the  human  understanding  is  by  steps  and  stages.' 
(Mozley,  Ruling  Ideas  in  Early  Ages,  p.  244.) 

^  See  Willibald,  Vit.  S.  Bonifac.  8,  on  the  destruction  of  the  oak  of 
Thunor ;  and  Maclear,  Con  v.  of  Slavs,  p.  134,  on  St.  Otho  of  Bamberg. 

^  To  take  sixth-century  documents  only, — Councils  of  that  age  had 
forbidden  the  eating  of  idol-meats,  and  the  swearing  by  the  heads  of 
animals  (Orleans,  in  533  and  541)  ;  the  worshipping  or  making  vows  at 
rocks  or  under  trees  (Tours,  Auxerre) ;  the  Pagan  revelries  on  New  Year's 
Day,  the  use  of  lots  made  of  wood  or  bread  (Auxerre)  :  see  Mansi,  viii. 
838;  ix.  116,  803,  911;  and  sermons  265,  277,  278,  apparently  by  St. 
Caesarius,  in  appendix  to  S.  Aug.  Serm.  For  Gregory's  own  vigilance  on 
this  subject,  see  his  Ep.  viii.  18,  '  Pervenit  ad  nos  quosdam  illic '  (at 
Terracina)  'arbores  colore;'  and  his  Dial.  ii.  8,  for  the  story  of  St. 
Benedict  destroying  the  altar  of  Apollo  and  erecting  an  oratory  on  its 
site.  Heathen  usages  as  to  idol- sacrifices,  eating  of  such  sacrifices, 
divinations,  auspices,  auguries,  lots,  amulets,  spells,  eating  horseflesh, 
cutting  of  the  body  (like  Baal-priests),  vows  or  worship  at  fountains  or 
trees  or  stones,  heathenish  observation  of  dreams,  heathen  rites  on 
Thursday  or  on  January  i,  shouting  in  order  *  to  defend  oneself  during 
an  eclipse,  '  placing  a  daughter  on  a  roof  or  above-a  furnace  to  cure  fever,' 
had  to  be  denounced  by  various  English  penitentials  and  canons.  See 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  190,  364,  424,  458  ;  Johnson,  E.  Can.  i.  378,  415, 
513 :  compare  Bede's  own  statement  in  iv.  27.  The  most  compendious 
account  of  such  customs  as  existing  in  Germany  in  the  eighth  century  is 
the  'indiculus  .  .  .  paganiarum'  in  the  'Concilium  Liptinense'  of  St. 
Boniface:  *De  sacrilegio,'  &c. ;  and  see  Willibald's  Life  of  him,  c.  8: 
*  Alii  lignis  et  frontibus  clanculo,  alii  autem  aperte  sacrificabant.' 


Treatment  of  Pagan  Temples,  8i 

if  any  likeness  of  the  old  Pagan  f eastings  were  tolerated  chap.  h. 
or  encouraged,  would  any  Christian  benediction  prevent 
a  revival  of  the  heathenish  spirit?  would  not  'the  cask 
retain  its  odour,' — would  not  the  ejected  fiend  return  to  his 
old  house  ?  Experience  had  proved  this  to  be  too  possible 
in  regard  to  the  *  merry-makings  ^ '  which  African  bishops 
had  endeavoured  to  Christianize,  but  which  St.  Augustine 
had  found  it  necessary,  in  the  interests  of  Christian  morality, 
to  condemn.  Yet  the  '  condescension,'  the  '  economy,'  which 
Gregory  here  recommended,  and  which  his  namesake  of 
Neocaesarea  in  the  third  century  had  carried  out  exactly 
in  the  same  method  ^,  and  apparently  with  great  success^ 
might  seem,  to  bold  and  ardent  minds,  a  natural  result  of 
that  Christian  considerateness  and  hopefulness  which  were 
inseparable  from  the  true  missionary  character.  Such 
persons  would  say  that  children  must  be  fed  with  milk, 
that  spiritual  education  must  be  gradual,  that  the  '  spoils 
of  the  strong  man'  might  in  a  true  sense  be  'divided,' 
that  the  Faith  might  be  trusted  to  transform  whatever  it 
touched  ^.  And  if  in  some  cases  this  policy  of  adaptation 
failed,  if  much  of  what  made  up  European  life  was  only 
superficially  Christianized,  and  religion  sufiered  from  the 
unguarded  borrowing  of  notions  or  customs  really  foreign 
to  its  spirit  *,  in  other  cases  the  '  deadly  pottage '  was  made 

^  *  Laetitiae.'     S.  Aug.  Ep.  29. 

^  Gregory  of  Neocaesarea  allowed  the  common  people  after  their  con- 
version '  to  enjoy  themselves  at  the  memorials  of  the  holy  martyrs, 
hoping  that  they  would  in  time  advance  to  a  graver  and  more  regular 
life,  while  even  the  faith  was  guiding  them  to  that  result ;  which  has,  in 
fact,  been  already  accomplished  in  the  case  of  the  majority,  all  their 
enjoyment  having  been  transferred  from  bodily  pleasure  to  the  spiritual 
kind  of  joy.'  Greg.  Nyss.  Vit.  Greg.  Thaumat.  27  (Op.  iii.  574  ;  Galland. 
Biblioth.  Patr.  iii.  466). 

^  So  the  Irish  believed  that  St.  Patrick,  finding  three  pillar-stones 
which  were  connected  with  Irish  paganism,  did  not  overthrow  them,  but 
inscribed  on  them  the  names,  Jesus,  Soter,  Salvator ;  Stokes,  Tripartite 
Life,  i.  107.  A  Pictish  well,  said  to  have  baleful  powers,  was  said  to 
have  been  made  holy  by  Columba's  blessing  and  touch  ;  Adamnan,  Vit. 
Col.  ii.  II.  One  of  the  boldest  acts  ever  done  on  this  principle  is  recorded 
of  St.  Barbatus  of  Benevento,  who  melted  down  a  golden  image  of 
a  viper  which  the  half-heathen  inhabitants  had  venerated,  and  made 
a  paten  and  chalice  out  of  it ;  see  Baring  Gould,  Lives  of  Saints,  Feb.  19. 

*  E.  g.  the  traces  of  polytheism  in  the  '  worship '  of  saints ;  the  tendency 

a 


82  Treatment  of  Pagan  Temples. 

harmless,  the  leaven  pervaded  and  assimilated  the  lump: 
forms  of  beauty,  once  bound  up,  inextricably  as  it  might 
seem,  with  idolatry  and  its  attendant  sensuality,  were 
gradually  detached,  and,  so  to  speak,  baptized  ^ :  words 
once  suggestive  of  Paganism  lost  by  degrees  their  evil 
significance,  as  we,  for  instance,  may  remember  whenever 
we  name  the  days  of  the  week^:  and  in  ways  which 
Tertullian,  for  instance,  would  never  have  dreamed  of, 
Christianity  'inherited  the  earth'  by  the  boldness  with 
which  it  claimed  and  took  possession  ^ 

This  letter  of  Gregory  to  Mellitus  was  the  last  of  his 
gifts  to  the  English  mission  * :  and  the  arrival  of  Mellitus 

to  an  idolatrous  use  of  images ;  old  heathen  spells  retained  with  Christ's 
name  inserted  into  them  (Kemble,  i.  365)  ;  the  old  divination  by  lots 
disguised  as  '■  sortes  sanctorum '  (Council  of  Agde,  c.  42)  ;  Pagan  super- 
stitions linked  to  Christian  holy-tides,  as  the  eves  of  St.  John  Baptist 
and  All  Saints.  See  Todd's  St.  Patrick,  pp.  128,  500.  There  was 
sometimes  a  temptation  to  make  compromises  with  heathenism,  as  in 
Noi-way  and  Iceland  in  the  tenth  century ;  see  Maclear's  Conversion  of 
Northmen,  pp.  57,  185. 

'  See  the  noble  passage  in  Abp.  Trench's  Huls.  Lect.  p.  121,  ed.  3. 

^  See  Taylor's  Words  and  Places,  p.  320  ;  Trench,  Study  of  Words, 
p.  93.  Bede  says,  De  Temporum  Katione,  15,  'people  now  call  the 
Paschal  time  after  the  goddess  Eostre,  consueto  antiquae  observationis 
vocabulo  gaudia  novae  solemnitatis  vocantes.'  So  Kemble,  i.  376  ;  Neale, 
Essays  on  Liturgiology,  p.  521  ;  Skeat,  Etymol.  Diet.  Compare  Yule, 
the  midwinter  feast,  turned  into  a  synonym  for  Christmas ;  and  on  the 
change  of  the  midsummer  festival  of  Balder  into  the  holyday  of  St.  John 
Baptist,  see  Thorpe's  Glossary,  letter  W. 

^  'Christianity,  always  ready  to  apply  and  hdllow  every  legacy  of  the  past' 
Lappenberg,  i.  53. 

*  Bede  says,  ii.  i,  that  Gregory  died  in  605,  having  held  'the  see  of 
the  Koman  and  apostolic  church  thirteen  years,  six  months,  ten  days.' 
According  to  this,  he  came  to  the  see  in  591  ;  but  the  ti-ue  year  seems  to 
be  590  (see  p.  41),  and,  adopting  the  same  reckoning  of  the  years  of  his 
pontificate,  we  gain  604  as  that  of  his  death.  So  L'Art  de  verifier, 
iii.  278,  and  the  Benedictine  Life,  Greg.  Op.  iv.  304,  and  Barmby,  p.  141. 
John  the  Deacon  says  that  a  story  was  current  in  the  English  Churches 
to  the  effect  that  Gregory,  while  walking  in  '  the  forum  of  Trajan,'  and 
looking  at  a  marble  sculpture  which  represented  an  instance  of  that 
emperor's  justice  and  kindness,  prayed  for  the  deliverance  of  his  soul 
from  hell ;  ii.  44.  He  asserts  that  Gregory  did  not  pray,  but  only  wept ; 
and  that  the  result  was  that  Trajan's  soul  was  —  not  translated  to 
paradise,  but — simply  'ab  inferni  solummodo  cruciatibus  liberata.'  The 
Benedictine  *  Life '  sets  aside  the  story,  including  John's  modification  of 
it,  as  a  fable ;  b.  3.  c.  lo.  It  appears  in  the  tenth  canto  of  Dante'g 
'Purgatory.' 


Arrival  of  Mellitus,  83 

and  his  companions  in  Britain,  which  probably  took  place  chap.  h. 
about  the  end  of  601,  seems  to  open  a  new  chapter  in  the 
history  of  the  newly-founded  Church.  The  staff  of  the 
mission  was  now  complete:  the  next  few  years  would 
show  what  it  could  effect  in  the  region  subject  to  the 
immediate  rule,  or  to  the  less  definite  supremacy,  of  the 
king  who,  after  cautious  deliberation,  had  so  heartily 
adopted  at  once  the  hopes  and  the  obligations  which  were 
involved  in  the  reception  of  its  creed. 


G  2 


CHAPTER  III. 


First  con- 
ference 
with 
British 
Bishops. 


One  of  Augustine's  first  acts,  if  not  the  very  first,  after 
the  arrival  of  the  four  new  missionaries,  was  to  act  upon 
that  sentence  in  Gregory's  answers  to  his  questions,  which 
encouraged  him  to  form  relations  with  the  British  bishops 
and  their  Church.  Ethelbert  could  in  some  ways  promote 
his  wish  to  confer  with  them  personally,  and  to  request 
their  co-operation  for  the  mission.  Bitter  as  was  their 
animosity  against  the  Saxon  name  and  race,  they  would  at 
all  events  distinguish  between  heathen  Saxons  close  to  their 
border  and  the  distant  'Bretwalda'  who  had  so  recently 
become  a  convert  to  the  faith  \  By  some  means  or  other, 
they  were  induced  to  agree  to  meet  Augustine,  in  602, 
or  perhaps  603,  '  at  a  place  still  called  Augustine's  Oak^  on 
the  confines  of  the  Hwiccians  and  the  west-Saxons ^.'  The 
Hwiccians  dwelt  along  the  south  bank  of  the  Severn,  so  as 
to  include  Gloucester,  Malmesbury,  Bath,  and  Cirencester, 

^  Bede's  account  of  the  great  Anglian  kings  in  ii.  5  implies  that  Edwin 
was  the  first  who  gained  a  regular  supremacy  over  *  the  Britons  *  ;  and 
his  language  naturally  includes  in  the  scope  those  of  Wales  as  well  as  of 
Strathclyde.  On  the  import  of  'Bretwalda'  (A.-S.  Chron.  872^  see 
reff.  ahove,  p.  46.  We  may  assume  that  it  implies  a  real  but  indefinite 
supremacy  of  varying  extent,  and  may  set  aside,  as  *  forced,  the  explana- 
tions that  aim  at  dissociating  Bret  from  Britons'  (Rhys,  Celt.  Brit.  isv"). 

^  Bede,  ii.  2.  To  hold  a  meeting  under  an  oak  was  in  conformity  with 
old  Gothic  usage.  'Very  many  of  the  tiysting-places  of  the  English 
courts  were  marked  in  like  manner  by  the  oak,  the  beech,  or  the  elm  ;  * 
Palgrave,  Eng.  Comm.  pp.  139,  clviii.  Oaks  were  taken  as  boundary- 
marks  ;  see  Shireoaks  near  Worksop,  and  Seven  oaks  in  Kent.  See  also 
Stevenson's  Chron.  Abingd.  ii.  p.  xlii.  In  one  list  of  boundaries,  Chr. 
Ab.  1.  26,  the  '  Foul  Oak '  occurs,  so  called  from  the  Pagan  worship  once 
connected  with  it.     See  above,  p.  79. 


Conference  with  Briiish  Bishops.  85 

in  their  district,  as  Bede  knew  it  in  his  time  ^  :  so  that  chap.  hi. 
a  border-line  between  this  district  and  Wessex  proper 
would  run  too  far  to  the  east  to  allow  of  our  placing 
'Augustine's  Oak'  at  Aust  or  AustclifF,  near  the  Bristol 
Channel.  It  was  probably  well  within  the  territory  of  the 
Hwiccians,  with  whom,  eleven  years  before,  Britons  had 
joined  in  the  rising  against  Ceawlin  2,  and  perhaps  we 
may  think  of  it  as  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Cirencester, 
which  was  accessible  by  a  Roman  road  from  the  east  ^. 
And  so  we  may  imagine  the  feelings  with  which  the  Welsh 
prelates,  doubtless  provided  with  assurances  of  safety, 
left  their  own  country  to  confer  with  a  'bishop  of  the 
Saxons'  who  derived  his  authority  from  Rome.  We 
cannot  identify  these  bishops.  David,  apparently,  had 
died  a  year  or  two  before ;  Dubricius  seems  to  have  been 
already  a  recluse  in  Bardsey;  Teilo  was  now  bishop  of 
Llandaff,  if  he  had  not  been  succeeded  by  Oudoceus  *.  If 
there  was  a  successor  of  David  at  Menevia^  he  would 
probably  accompany  the  successor  of  Dubricius.  Caerleon 
was  evidently  merged  in  Llandaff:  but  there  were  bishoprics 
at  Bangor,  St.  Asaph,  and  Llanbadarn,  and  also,  there  is  some 

^  For  the  province  of  the  Hwiccas  see  Bede,  iv.  13,  23.  It  included 
the  counties  of  '  Gloucester,  Worcester,  and  part  of  Warwick ' ;  Freeman, 
Old-Engl.  Hist.  pp.  39,  82.  Worcester  has  been  supposed  to  be  a  cor- 
ruption of  Hwic-wara-  (dwellers)  ceaster,  Taylor's  Words  and  Places, 
p.  69.  See  Green,  Making  of  England,  pp.  129,  147,  224.  '  Their  country 
corresponded  in  extent  with  the  old  diocese  of  Worcester ; '  Elton,  Origins 
of  Engl.  Hist.  p.  376. 

-  Malmesb.  G.  R.  i.  17 ;  Green,  p.  209. 

'  I.  e,  via  London  and  Silchester  (iter  7),  and  thence  by  Speen  (iter  13) 
to  '  Durocornovium '  or  Corinium  =  Cirencester. 

*  Llandaff  was  the  bishopric  for  Gwent,  which  is  identified  with 
Monmouthshire.  Dyfed  or  Demetia  is  Pembrokeshire  with  part  of 
Caermarthenshire,  and  was  under  St.  David's.  In  the  eighth  century, 
according  to  Giraldus,  Wales  was  divided  into  Venedotia,  Deheubarth 
including  Demetia  or  Dyfed,  and  Powys ;  Descr.  Camb.  i.  2.  Of  these, 
Venedotia  or  Gwynedd  comprised  Carnarvonshire,  Anglesey,  most  part 
of  Merionethshire,  part  of  Denbigh  and  Flint :  its  bishopric  was  at 
Bangor.  Powys,  under  St.  Asaph,  included  parts  of  Flint  and  Denbigh, 
part  of  Merioneth,  and  also  of  Shropshire,  all  Montgomery,  part  of  Radnor 
and  Brecknock.  Deheubarth  comprised  the  six  southern  counties.  The 
Welsh  episcopate  was  now  diocesan,  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  142. 

'  See  above,  p.  37.  The  Annal.  Camb.  date  the  death  of  Bishop  Cynog 
or  Cynauc,  who  by  one  account  succeeded  David,  ia  606. 


86  Question  of  Easter, 

CHAP.  in.  reason  to  think,  at  Llanafanfaur,  at  Margam,  and  perhaps 
at  Weeg  in  Herefordshire^.  The  fresh  recollection  of  a 
national  synod,  holden  at  Caerleon  in  the  year  of  David's 
death  ^,  would  render  the  prelates  specially  indisposed  to 
any  compromise  of  their  independence,  or  any  surrender 
of  their  usages.  It  was  probably  with  some  amount  of 
jealous  suspicion  that  they  met  the  Roman  strangers  at 
'  the  Oak.'  Augustine,  says  Bede, '  began  to  try  to  persuade 
them  by  brotherly  admonitions  to  hold  Catholic  peace  with 
himself,  and  to  undertake  in  conjunction  with  him  the 
work  of  preaching  the  gospel  to  the  heathen,  for  the 
Lord's  sake.'  This  was  very  well,  the  Britons  might 
remark;  but  what  was  meant  by  Catholic  peace?  It 
appeared  that  there  were  some  matters  in  which  the 
Britons  were  not  at  one  with  the  rest  of  the  Church. 
What  were  they  ? 
Paschal  The  first  and  chief  point  of  difference  was  as  to  the  mode 

qiies  ion.  ^^  reckoning  Easter.  The  Paschal  question  is  not  attractive 
to  the  reader  ofTlusebius ;  it  is  profoundly  wearisome  to 
the  reader  of  Bede  ^.  The  original  form  of  it  was  simple. 
It  being  agreed  on  all  hands  that  there  must  be  a  yearly 
festival  in  memorial  of  the  Redemption,  as  effected  by  the 
Passion  and  Resurrection  of  Christ;  that  a  fast  of  some 
undefined  duration  should  precede  it ;  and  that  this 
Christian  Passover,  thus  preceded  by  a  fast,  should  to 
some  extent  be  regulated  by  the  season  of  the  Jewish 
Passover ; — the  question  arose  *,  '  To  what  extent  ?     Shall 

*  Bp.  Jones  and  Freeman,  Hist.  St.  David's,  p.  266  ;  Haddan  and 
Stubbs,  i.  148,  iii.  41  ;  Pryce,  p.  145.  If  these  latter  bishoprics  existed, 
they  would  be  for  Glamorganshire  and  Herefordshire.  Llanafanfaur 
was  in  Brecknock.     Llanbadarn  was  the  see  for  Central  Wales. 

^  Annal.  Camb.  a.  601. 

^  Especially  when  one  is  forced  to  see  the  absence  of  a  due  sense  of 
proportion  in  his  treatment  of  the  subject ;  when  he  associates  with 
these  disputes  such  a  phrase  as  'spiritalis  gratiam  lucis,'  ii.  2;  and 
again,  *  Movit  haec  quaestio  sensus  et  corda  multorum,  timentium  ne 
forte  accepto  Christian itatis  vocabulo,  in  vacuum  currerent  aut  cucur- 
rissent,'  iii.  25  ;  and  Egbert's  success  in  winning  over  the  monks  of  Hy 
to  the  '  true  Easter '  just  before  his  own  death  is  described  as  his  '  seeing 
the  day  of  the  Lord/  &c.,  v.  22. 

*  See  Eus.  v.  23,  24.  He  uses  the  phrases,  '  the  closing  of  the  fast,*  *  the 
festival  of  the  Saviour's  Passover,'  the  celebration  of  the  mystery  of  the 


Question  of  Easter.  87 

we  conclude  the  fast,  and  begin  the  festival,  on  that  chap.  in. 
fourteenth  day  of  the  moon  on  which  the  Jews  were  to 
kill  their  Passover,  on  whatever  day  of  the  week  it  may 
fall?  or  shall  we  take  as  our  fixed  point  that  first  day 
of  the  week  on  which  the  Lord  rose  again  ? '  The  majority 
of  Churches  took  the  latter  alternative:  the  Church  of 
Ephesus,  and  those  dependent  on  it  in  the  province  of 
*  Asia '  (the  western  part  of  Asia  Minor  ^),  took  the  former, 
and  were  therefore  afterwards  called  Quartodecimans. 
Fresh  complications  arose  in  the  third  century,  in  con- 
nexion with  a  question  whether  the  festival  should  be 
always  kept  after  the  vernal  equinox^:  and  different 
canons  or  'cycles'  were  proposed,  in  order  to  ascertain 
for  a  number  of  years  the  true  beginning  of  the  'first 
lunar '  or  the  '  Paschal '  month  ^.  Thus  Hippolytus  made 
such  a  cycle,  or  table,  for  sixteen  years  ^:   Dionysius  of 

Lord's  Resurrection,'  to  describe  one  and  the  same  thing.  Polycrates, 
the  representative  of  the  Quartodecimans,  insists  repeatedly  on  the  duty 
of  adhering  to  {rrjpeiv)  '  the  fourteenth,'  See  Eus.  v.  24.  Our  English 
use  of  'Easter'  instead  of  *  Pasch,'  —  which  was  the  usual  term  in 
Scotland,  as  in  Wales, — obscures  to  some  extent  the  bearings  of  the 
question. 

^  It  is  necessary  to  observe  this,  because  the  extent  to  which  Quarto- 
decimanism  prevailed  is  exaggerated  by  ignoring  the  technical  and 
restrictive  sense  of  'Asia.' 

2  Hefele,  Councils,  i.  316  fif.,  E.  Tr.  'The  Jews  had  always  determined 
the  14th'  as  occurring  after  the  equinox,  but  subsequently  they  some- 
times kept  it  before  the  equinox,  '  until  the  fall  of  .Jerusalem,'  when  their 
first  month  began  as  early  as  March  5. 

3  Ilefele,  i.  318,  E.  Tr.  Diet.  Chr.  Antiq.  i.  591  :  ^The  use  of  cycles 
arose  out  of  the  necessity,  when  lunar  months  were  in  use,  of  linking 
together  in  some  manner  the  changes  of  the  moon  and  the  sun.'  King, 
Ch.  Hist.  Irel.  i.  195:  'In  order  to  determine  on  what  days  the  full 
moons  will  occur  in  coming  years,  different  cycles  or  periods  of  so  many 
years  have  been  invented  after  the  expiration  of  which  the  new  and  full 
moons  were  found  to  fall  again  on  the  same  days  as  before.' 

*  Euseb.  vi.  22.  See  it  in  Galland.  Bibl.  Patr.  ii.  516  if.  It  was  in- 
scribed on  the  marble  chair  of  the  statue  of  Hippolytus,  on  the  right  side 
of  which  was  a  table  of  Paschal  full  moons,  on  the  left,  of  Easter 
Sundays,  calculated  according  to  a  cycle  of  sixteen  years.  It  began  from 
the  first  year  of  Alexander  Severus.  Hippolytus  would  defer  the  Paschal 
festival  for  a  week  not  only  if  the  fourteenth,  but  '  also  if  the  fifteenth 
moon  fell  on  a  Sunday '  (Bucher.  in  Gall.  p.  520).  See  his  canon  reduced 
to  the  form  of  that  of  Victorius,  ib.  p.  522 ;  and  see  Hefele,  i.  318 ;  Diet. 
Chr.  Antiq.  i.  592  ff. 


88  Question  of  Easter. 

CHAP.  in.  Alexandria  for  eight  ^ :  Anatolius  of  Laodicea  for  nineteen  ^. 
It  was  their  principle  that  Easter  must  follow  the  equinox. 
The  Nicene  Council  reaffirmed  the  maxim  upheld  against 
the  Quartodecimans, — that  the  festival  should  always  be 
on  a  Sunday ;  the  terms  of  the  decree  are  unfortunately 
lost,  but  we  infer  from  Constantine's  circular  to  the 
churches  that  it  laid  down  as  a  principle  that  the  Christian 
solemnity  should  never  concur  with  the  Jewish^.  The 
context  shows  that  what  was  primarily  aimed  at  was  the 
prevention  of  the  discordance  and  scandal  which  would 
follow  if  in  any  given  year,  when  the  Jews  might  be  keep- 
ing their  Passover  before  the  vernal  equinox,  some  churches 
did  the  like  as  to  Easter.  It  was  therefore  ordained  that 
Easter  Sunday  should  always  and  everywhere  be  a  Sunday 
folloiuing  the  equinox :  and  the  principle  in  question  would 
also  imply  that  it  should  similarly  follow,  and  never 
coincide  with,  the  fourteenth  day  of  the  Paschal  month. 
Later  statements,  to  the  effect  that  the  council  adopted  the 
nineteen  years'  cycle,  and  that  it  commissioned  the 
Alexandrian  see,  by  the  aid  of  Alexandrian  science,  to 
ascertain  for  each  year,  and  to  notify  to  other  churches 
through  the  Roman  see,  the  day  to  be  kept  as  Easter 
Sunday,  may  require  considerable  deduction:  a  more  or 
less  general  consent  of  churches  on  the  latter  point  may 
have  been  insensibly  formalized  into  a  synodical  resolu- 
tion :  and  the  acceptance  of  the  Alexandrian  cycle,  and  of 
March  21  as  the  date  of  the  equinox,  would  be  involved 
in  such  consent.  Rome  dated  the  equinox  on  March  18, 
and  adhered  to  her  own  way  in  this  matter;  and  the 
result  was  that  between  A,  D.  325  and  343  the  Roman 
Easter  fell  six  times  on  a  different  day  from  the 
Alexandrian  ^.  In  343  the  Sardican  Council  attempted 
a   settlement,   which   was   not    in  effect   observed.      Two 

'  Euseb.  vii.  20. 

^  Euseb.  vii.  32 ;  Hefele,  i.  320,  '  the  completion  of  this  cycle  of  nine- 
teen years  is  attributed  to  Eusebius  of  Caesarea.'  But  see  Bp.  Lightfoot 
in  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  iii.  314,  against  this,  and  against  the  notion  that  the 
council  explicitly  adopted  that  cycle.     See  also  Smith's  Bede,  p.  696. 

^  Socr.  I.  9.     See  Hefele.  i.  325-327.     Cp.  Leo  the  Great,  Ep.  121. 

*  Hefele,  i.  328.     See  Smith's  Bede,  p.  697. 


Question  of  Easter.  89 

successive  archbishops  of  Alexandria,  Theophilus  and  chap.  m. 
Cyril,  framed  Paschal  tables  based  on  the  nineteen  years' 
cycle :  and  although  Rome  for  some  time  used  the  cycle  of 
eighty-four  years  ^  which  had  superseded  that  of  sixteen, 
and  was  '  a  little  improved  by  Sulpicius  Severus,'  '  it  has 
been  conjectured,'  says  Hefele,  that  Pope  Hilary  adopted 
the  better  scheme  which  had  been  framed  by  Victorius  of 
Aquitaine  2,  an  abbot  at  Rome,  in  456-7 ;  and  finally,  in 
527,  one  still  more  accurate,  and  completely  in  accordance 
with  Alexandrian  calculations,  was  proposed  by  Dionysius 
Exiguus,  and  accepted  by  Rome  and  Italy  ^  while  the 
Victorian  cycle  *  long  held  its  ground  in  Gaul,'  and  the  old 
cycle  of  eighty-four  years  was  retained  by  the  British  and 
Irish  Churches^.  But  the  mere  retention  of  an  old- 
fashioned  cycle  was  not  the  main  ground  of  offence,  which 
consisted  in  the  circumstance  that  the  insular  Celts 
departed  in  fact  from  the  principle  of  the  Nicene  resolu- 
tion ^,  by  allowing  the  fourteenth  of  the  moon  to  be  Easter 
Day,  if  it  fell  on  a  Sunday  ^ ;  whereas  in  that  case  they 

'  Hefele.  I.e.  ;  Diet.  Chr.  Ant.  i.  592.  See  Lanigan,  Ecel.  Hist.  Ireland, 
ii.  374.  He  says  that  the  Roman  eycle  *  supposed  eaeh  lunation  to  be 
shorter  by  two  minutes  and  some  seconds  than  it  really  is,'  &e.  Owing 
to  these  differences  the  Roman  Easter  in  387  was  on  March  21,  the 
Alexandrian  on  April  25  ;  in  444  the  Roman  rule  would  place  Easter 
on  March  26,  the  Alexandrian  on  April  23,  and  Leo  adopted  for  the 
time  the  Alexandrian  calculation  :  so  in  a.d.  455. 

^  For  Victorius  of  Aquitaine's  eycle  of  532  yeai-s,  formed  by  multiplying 
the  lunar  eycle  of  19  years  by  the  solar  of  28,  see  Prideaux,  Connection, 
ii.  255 ;  Smith's  Bede,  p.  700  ;  Lanigan,  ii.  377  ;  Hefele,  i.  330 ;  Diet. 
Chr.  Biogr.  iv.  1139.     The  cycle  began  with  a.d.  28. 

3  Hefele,  i.  330  ;  Prideaux,  ii.  257  ;  Smith's  Bede,  p.  701  ;  Haddan  and 
Stubbs,  i.  152.  The  revision  of  the  Victorian  table  by  Dionysius  '  trans- 
ferred to  him  most  of  the  merit  which  belonged  to  Victorius  ;  *  Diet.  Chr. 
Ant.  i.  594. 

*  Diet.  Chr.  Antiq.  1.  e.  ;  Hefele,  i.  330 ;  Lanigan,  ii.  384.  For  Gaul 
see  fourth  Council  of  Orleans,  a.d.  541,  can.  i,  Mansi,  ix.  113;  Greg. 
Turon.,  Hist.  Fr.  v.  17,  implies  that  most  of  the  Gauls  kept  Easter  in  577 
on  April  18,  according  to  Victorius,  but  some  with  the  Spaniards  on 
March  21 ;  ep.  ib.  x.  23  ;  and  see  Columban  in  Greg.  Ep.  ix.  127. 

5  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  153.  See  Bede,  ii.  19,  '  quod  in  Nicaena 
synodo,'  &c. 

'  As  Bede  says,  they  observed  Easter  *a  quarta  decima  usque  ad  vicesi- 
mam  lunam,'  i.e.  would  include  the  fourteenth  moon  among  those  which 
might  belong  to  Easter  Sunday,  and  from  it  onwards  to  the  twentieth. 
Cp.  Bede,  ii.  4,  iii.  3,  17,  25,  28.     Lanigan  says  that  Sulpicius  found 


90  Question  of  Easter, 

CHAP.  ni.  ought  to  have  deferred  Easter  till  the  twenty-first. 
According  to  the  orthodox  reckoning^,  the  fifteenth  was 
the  first  day  of  the  moon  which  could  be  Easter  Sunday ; 
this  method,  starting  at  the  fifteenth,  and  going  on  to  the 
twenty-first,  kept  clear  of  the  Jewish  day;  whereas  the 
Celtic  did  not  keep  clear  of  it^.  That  is,  the  Celtic 
calculation  was  objectionable  as  adhering  to  a  discredited 
cycle  for  the  Paschal  moons,  but  distinctly  offensive  as 
including  the  fourteenth  within  the  days  on  which  Easter 
Sunday  might  fall.  But,  as  we  see  at  once,  the  Britons 
were  not  really  Quartodecimans,  inasmuch  as  they  made 
a  point  of  keeping  Easter  on  a  Sunday  ^ ;  and  their  own 
claim  to  derive  their  traditional  method  from  the  Churches 
of '  Asia,'  and  so  from  St.  John  himself,  was  without  founda- 
tion. This,  it  may  be  added,  annihilates  an  argument 
which  has  been  often  advanced  in  favour  of  a  directly 
Oriental    origin   for   the    ancient    British    Church '^.      It 

that  by  a  mistake  in  the  Roman  reckoning  of  the  days  of  the  moon,  the 
fourteenth  moon  was  called  the  sixteenth :  he  restored  to  it  the  name 
of  fourteenth,  and  directed  that  as  it  was  really  the  same  day  as  the 
sixteenth  of  the  unrevised  cycle,  Easter  Sunday  might  fall  on  it.  This 
rule  was  adopted  by  the  Irish  and  British  (ii.  384). 

^  In  the  fifth  century,  the  Latins  would  not  allow  even  the  fifteenth 
to  be  kept  as  Easter  Sunday  :  their  Paschal  limits  began  with  the 
sixteenth  ;  Lanigan,  ii.  375,  378  ;  Diet.  Chr.  Ant.  i.  594.  So,  when  in 
590  their  fifteenth  was  a  Sunday,  Gregory  of  Tours  (more  anti-Judaic 
than  even  Wilfrid  or  Bede)  deferred  his  Easter  until  the  twenty-second, 
so  as  to  keep  it  wholly  outside  the  Jewish  festal  period,  H.  Fr.  x.  23.  By 
one  reading,  the  account  of  the  'third  order  of  Irish  saints'  says  that 
some  of  them  kept  Easter  on  the  fourteenth  moon  (as  did  those  of  the  first 
and  second  order),  others  on  the  sixteenth.    See  Todd's  St.  Patrick,  p.  89. 

^  Prideaux,  ii.  258.     See  Bede,  v.  21. 

^  So  says  Bede  of  the  Irish,  who  agreed  with  the  Britons  :  iii.  4, 
*  Quem  tamen  et  antea  non  semper  in  luna  quarta  decima,  cum  Judaeis, 
ut  quidam  rebantur,*  &c.  lb.  iii.  17,  25.  So  Eddi  clearly,  *a  quarta 
decima  luna  Dominica  die  veniente,'  Vit.  Wilfr.  10.  Nor  had  the  earlier 
British  Christians  been  Quartodecimans.  See  Euseb.  V.  C.  iii.  9 ;  Soc. 
v.  22  ;  and  the  subscriptions  of  the  three  British  bishops  to  the  Council 
of  Aries  ;  cp.  Hefele,  i.  321.  Hodgkin  remarks  that  Hhe  Irishmen,  .  .  . 
by  harping  continually  on  ...  "  the  14th  day,"  gave  their  opponents  the 
opportunity  of  fastening  upon  them  the  name  of  Quartodecimans '  (Italy 
and  her  Invaders,  vi.  116),  as  e.g.  Eddi  did  in  a  sense,  v.  15.  See 
Plummer's  Bede,  ii.  114. 

*  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  51;  Lanigan,  ii.  385;  Haddan's  Remains, 
p.  215. 


Baptismal  Rites.  91 

appears  also  that  the  Britons  rely  on  the  authority  of  chap.  hi. 
a  Paschal  canon  ascribed  to  Anatolius,  but  now  admitted  to 
be  a  forgery,  and  '  perhaps  designed  to  support '  the  Celtic 
rule^ 

Another  difference,  but  vaguely  alluded  to  in  Bede's  Baptismal 
account  of  the  conference,  consisted  in  this,  that  the  Britons  ^  ^^* 
did  not '  perform  the  ministry  of  baptizing  fully  according 
to  the  Roman  manner  2.'  If  we  ask  in  what  respect  they 
fell  short,  we  are  left  without  any  certain  answer.  If  they 
did  not  use  trine  immersion  ^,  this  Heed  not  have  been 
a  serious  difficulty  to  the  'disciples'  of  a  Pope  who  not 
only  admitted  that  either  trine  or  single  immersion  might 
have  an  orthodox  significance,  but  advised  the  Spanish 
Church,  under  the  circumstances  of  its  own  position  in 
regard  to  Arianism,  to  retain  the  latter  use*.  Still, 
Augustine  may  have  been  unaware  of  this  exceptional 
counsel,  or  have  ignored  it  as  exceptional,  and  deemed 
himself  bound  to  insist  on  the  method  which  prevailed 
everywhere  else  on  the  continent.  It  has  been  less 
probably  supposed  that  the  Britons  may  have  omitted  that 
unction  of  the  crown  of  the  head  which  usually  came 
between  the  baptism  and  the  confirmation^,  or  some 
other  ceremonies  which  formed  part  of  the  Roman  rite  ^. 

^  Diet.  Chr.  Ant.  i.  594.  Sea  this  'canon'  in  Galland.  Bibl.  Patr.  iii. 
545.  According  to  it,  in  nineteen  years  Easter  Sunday  fell  three  times 
on  the  fourteenth  moon  ;  Vit.  Wilfr.  10.  Cf.  Duchesne,  Origines,  p.  229, 
*  Des  livres  apocryphes  composes  expres  pour  soutenir  leur  usage 
national.' 

^  * Compleatis,'  Bede,  ii.  2. 

^  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  153  ;  Haddan's  Remains,  p.  320.  Whitley 
Stokes,  Tripartite  Life  of  St.  Patrick,  i.  p.  clxxxiii,  says  that  trine 
immersion  was  the  Irish  practice :  but  Warren  thinks  that  the  mention 
of  it  in  the  earliest  extant  Irish  *  baptismal  office '  may  be  due  to  Roman 
influences ;  Lit.  and  Ritual  of  Celtic  Ch.  p.  65. 

*  Greg.  Ep.  i.  43. 

5  Muratori,  Lit.  Rom.  ii.  157.  The  unction  of  confirmation  was  on  the 
forehead ;  ib.  i.  571  ;  Innocent  I,  Ep.  i.  3.  The  Irish  certainly  used 
chrism  in  connexion  with  baptism  ;  Warren,  Lit.  and  Ritual,  1.  c. 

*  Hussey's  Bede,  p.  78.  If  the  British  clergy  were  careless  as  to 
naming  each  Person  of  the  Holy  Trinity  at  the  time  of  the  '  immersion,' 
Augustine  would  surely  have  insisted  distinctly  on  a  point  so  essential 
to  the  sacrament.  It  is  observable  that  St.  Boniface  asked  for,  and 
obtained,  the  papal  approval  of  an  English  canon,  to  the  effect  that 
'quicunque  sine   invocatione  Trinitatis  lotus  fuisset,  sacramentum  re- 


92  Tonsure. 

A  third  peculiarity,  not  mentioned  here  by  Bede, 
although  he  has  enough  to  tell  us  about  it  in  other 
passages  ^  related  to  the  yisiljle  appearance  of  tlie  Celtic 
jjlergy.  To  cut  the  hair  short  was  an  ascetic  fashion, 
which  gradually  extended  itself  to  all  ecclesiastics  ^ ;  it  was 
supposed  to  carry  out  St.  Paul's  hint  in  i  Cor.  xi.  14,  to 
serve  as  a  protest  against  effeminate  luxuriousness,  and  to 
represent  '  seclusion  from  worldly  pleasure  ^'  and  a  special 
dedication  to  the  service  of  God.  By  degrees,  an  actual 
'  tonsure '  came  into  use ;  and  late  in  the  fifth  century  ^  it 
took  the  '  coronal '  form,  the  top  of  the  head  being  shaved 
close,  and  a  circle  or  crown  of  hair  left  to  grow  around  it. 
This  fashion  obtained  in  Gaul  and  in  Italy.  But  the 
Celtic  clergy  exhibited  a  semicircle  of  hair  on  the  front  of 
the  head  ^  so  that  their  continental  brethren,  on  inspecting 
them  from  behind,  were  scandalized  by  finding  '  the  seeming 
crown  lopped  off^.'     The  Roman  tonsure,  like  every  other 

generationis  non  haberot ; '  Zach.  Ep.  iii.  But  the  Pope's  words  do  not 
show  that  this  canon  was  framed  under  Augustine  (^Warren,  p.  66)  ;  on 
the  contrary,  he  calls  it  a  '  capitulum  for  the  synod  of  that  province  in 
which  Boniface  was  born,'  and  which  Augustine  and  his  successors, 
in  eluding  Theodore,  had  '  governed.' 

^  Bede.,  iii.  26  ;  iv.  i  ;  v.  21,  22. 

^  See  Bingham,  b.  vi.  4.  16 ;  vii.  3.  6,  that  anciently  the  crown  of  the 
head  was  not  shaved,  but  the  hair  was  kept  short.  He  cites  Jerome  in 
Ezech.  1.  13  to  this  effect,  and  Salvian  de  Gub.  Dei,  viii.  4,  'recisis 
comarum  fluentium  jubis.'  See  also  Greg.  Turon.  de  Mirac.  S.  Mart, 
iii.  15,  'humiliatis  capillis,'  and  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr,  ii.  1989.  Mabillon  owns 
that  in  Benedict's  time  'monachi  ad  cutem  resecti  ixon  erant;'  Ann. 
Bened.  i.  53.     Yet  some  ancient  ascetics  shaved  the  head  bare  ;  Soc.  iii.  i. 

^  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  54.  The  famous  '  Nestorian '  inscription  in 
China  explained  the  tonsure  as  signifying  that  the  clergy  had  '  no 
inward  affections  of  their  own.' 

*  Smith's  Bede,  p.  712  ;  Lanigan,  iii.  68  flf.  In  633,  the  fourth  Council 
of  Toledo,  c.  41,  ordered  all  clerics  to  shave  the  whole  of  the  top  of  the 
head,  and  leave  below  *  solam  circuli  coronam,' — not  like  the  'lectors'  in 
Gallicia,  who  wore  long  hair  like  laics,  and  shaved  a  small  circle  on  the 
top  of  the  head  only.  The  portrait  of  Gregory'  the  Great  shows  the  coronal 
tonsure. 

'"  As  the  Irish  themselves  expressed  it,  '  one  tonsure  from  ear  to  ear  ; ' 
Todd's  Life  of  St.  Patrick,  p.  487.  Patrick  was  called  the  Tailcend,  or 
*  Shaven-head'  ;  ib.  p,  411  ;  Stokes,  Tripartite  Life,  i.  p.  clxxxiv. 

*  '  Decurtatam  ; '  Ceolfrid's  letter  in  Bede,  v.  21.  See  this  represented 
as  on  the  head  of  St.  Mummolinus  of  Noyon,  who  had  been  a  monk 
of  Luxeuil;  Mabillon,  Ann.  Bened.  i.  529. 


Conference  with  Britons.  93 

Roman  usage,  was,  as  a  matter  of  course,  traced  up  to  chap. 
St.  Peter  ^ ;  and  its  wearers,  or  at  any  rate  the  more  zealous 
among  them,  were  pleased  to  attribute  the  rival  fashion  to 
Simon  Magus  2.  If  these  various  disputes  seem  more  or 
lees  trivial,  let  us  remember  that  when  the  Church  was 
still  fighting  against  masses  of  heathenism,  such  points  of 
external  uniformity  might  'well  have  appeared,  even  to 
the  strongest  and  most  spiritual  minds,  far  graver  than 
charity  can  allow  them  to  be  in  our  time  ^! 

To  return  to  the  conference.  Bede  tells  us*  that  'after 
a  long  discussion,'  in  which  the  British  delegates  '  refused 
to  comply  with  the  prayers,  or  the  exhortations,  or  the 
reproaches  of  Augustine  and  his  companions,  but  preferred 
their  own  traditions  to  all  the  Churches  which  throupfhout 
the  world  were  at  unity  with  each  other  in  Christ,'  Augus- 
tine proposed  to  appeal  to  God  for  a  sign  that  might 
'  declare  which  tradition  was  to  be  followed,  and  by  what 
path  men  were  to  hasten  to  enter  His  kingdom.'  The 
criterion  which  he  proposed  was,  'Let  a  sick  man  be 
brought  forward,  and  let  the  party  whose  prayers  shall 
avail  for  his  cure  be  accepted  as  having  the  right  faith  and 
practice.'  The  Britons,  though  reluctantly,  agreed :  a  blind 
man  of  English  race  was  brought  forward:  'the  British 
priests '  failed  to  cure  him,  but  Augustine  prayed,  the  blind 
man  received  his  sight,  and  the  Britons  owned  that  it  was 

^  Aldhelm  supposes  St.  Peter  to  have  had  three  reasons  for  instituting 
it ;  Ep.  to  King  Geraint.  Gregory  of  Tours  says  that  Peter  *  caput 
desuper  tonderi  instituit'  in  order  to  teach  humility;  De  Glor.  Mart, 
i.  28 ;  but  see  Smith's  Bede,  p.  705,  on  the  '•  improbability  *  of  ascribing 
to  an  apostle  '  tenacious  of  Jewish  observances '  an  observance  contrary 
to  Levit.  xix.  27.  If,  he  adds,  it  v^as  Paul  w^ho  shaved  his  head  at 
Cenchrea,  '  capillum  postea  crescere  sinebat,'  &c. 

^  Bede,  v.  21  :  'Tonsuram  earn  quam  magum /t-nm^  habuisse  Simonem/ 
&c.  Aldhelm  gives  this  as  '  the  opinion  of  very  many.*  See  Stokes, 
•Tripartite  Life,  ii.  509.  But  it  was  also  traced  up  to  Dubthach,  wrongly 
described  as  Hhe  swineherd  of  Laeghaire,  the  Pagan  king  who  resisted 
Patrick;'  Reeves's  Adamn.  p.  350;  Lanigan,  iii.  69,  71,  who  is  equally 
sarcastic  as  to  the  '  Petrine '  and  the  '■  Simonian '  hypotheses,  and  Rhys, 
Celt.  Britain,  p.  75. 

'  Gold  win  Smith,  Irish  Hist,  and  Irish  Character,  p.  29.  See  Prof. 
Stokes,  Ireland  and  the  Celtic  Church,  p.  155,  that  any  approach  to 
Judaising  was  *  still  a  real  terror.' 

Qui  cum  longa  disputatione  habita,'  &c. 


94 


Second  Conference, 


CHAP.  in.  the  true  way  of  righteousness  which  Augustine  taught,  but 
added  that  they  could  not  give  up  their  old  customs  with- 
out the  consent  of  their  brethren :  they  therefore  requested 
that  a  second  synod  might  be  held,  in  which  a  larger 
number  would  be  present.  This  part  of  the  story  reads 
very  like  an  'interpolation^'  into  the  original  narrative. 
Bede,  no  doubt,  reported  faithfully  what  was  in  his  time 
the  Canterbury  tradition  ^ :  but  the  incident  of  the  miracle 
might  have  become  embodied  in  that  tradition  in  the 
course  of  a  century  or  more ;  and  the  Britons  are  repre- 
sented as  acting  with  such  inconsistency  as  they  would 
hardly  have  shown,  especially  when  we  read  what  follows. 
The  second  meeting  was  held :  seven  British  bishops,  '  as 
is  related  ^' — so  Bede  with  his  usual  caution  tells  us, — 
resolved  on  attending.  This  implies  that  the  former 
gathering  had  not  included  all  the  prelates.  They  were 
accompanied  by  '  many  most  learned  men,  especially '  from 
the  great  monastery  of  Bangor  Iscoed,  then  under  the  rule 
of  Abbot  Dunod,  whom  Bede  calls  Dinoot.  The  deputies 
repaired  beforehand  to  a  hermit  ^  famed  for  prudence  and 
holiness,  and  asked  whether  he  would  advise  them  to  give 
up  their  own  traditions  at  Augustine's  request,  or  not. 
The  response  was,  '  If  he  be  a  man  of  God,  follow  him.' 


Second 
Confer- 
ence. 


Advice 
of  the 
Hermit 


^  Hook,  i.  68,  treats  it  as  a  mere  'Canterbuiy  tale.'  It  appears  that 
the  delegates  to  the  second  conference  knew  nothing,  or  else  thought 
nothing,  of  the  story  of  the  blind  man. 

2  Lingard  observes  that  the  abbot  Albinus  of  Canterbury,  who  was 
Bede's  informant  about  Kentish  Church  affairs,  derived  his  account 
partly  from  documents,  partly  from  'seniorum  traditione '  (Bede,  Praef.), 
and  that  this  *  traditio,*  at  the  distance  of  more  than  a  hundred  years, 
'must  have  received  embellishments  ;'  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  68. 

^  *Ut  perhibent.*  Cp.  i.  25,  'fertur;'  ii.  i,  'dicunt;'  ii.  5,  'ut  vulgo 
fertur;*  ii.  12,  '  ut  ferunt;'  ii.  16,  '  perhibetur ; '  iii.  2,  'fertur;'  iii.  5, 
12,  16,  *  ferunt;'  iii.  14,  16,  24,  'fertur;'  iv.  13,  'ferunt;'  iv.  14,  'per- 
hibentur ;'  iv.  19,  'ferunt,'  'sunt  qui  dicant;'  iv.  23,  30,  'ferunt,'  &c. 

*  The  hermit-life  was  much  honoured  in  Wales  ;  compare  the  retire- 
ment of  Dubricius  to  Bardsey.  King  Tewdric  (see  below)  gave  up  his 
realm  to  his  son  Mouric,  '  et  vitam  heremitalem  in  rupibus  Dindyrn  coepit 
discere'  (i.  e.  at  Tintern)  ;  Monast.  Angl.  vi.  1222.  See  Girald.  Descr. 
Camb.  1.  18:  'Heremitas  .  .  .  abstinentiae  majoris,  magisque  spirit- 
uales,  alibi  non  videas.'  Bede  refers  to  hermit  life  in  iii.  19 ;  iv.  28, 
29  ;  V.  I,  9,  12.  For  Scotic  hermit  life  see  also  Adamnan,  i.  49 ;  iii.  23, 
and  p.  366  (ed.  Reeves). 


Advice  of  the  Hermit.  95 

*  But  how  shall  we  ascertain  that  % '  '  Our  Lord/  replied  chap.  ui. 
the  hermit,  '  spoke  of  Himself  as  meek  and  lowly  in  heart. 
If  Augustine  shows  that  temper,  you  may  believe  that  he 
has  learned  of  Christ,  and  taken  up  His  yoke,  and  is  offer- 
ing it  to  you.  But  if  he  is  harsh  and  proud,  it  is  clear 
that  he  is  not  from  God :  we  are  not  to  care  for  his  words.' 
'  But  how  is  this  to  be  discerned  ? '  The  oracle  gave 
a  precise  answer :  '  Manage  ^  so  that  he  shall  come  to  the 
meeting-place  before  you.  If,  when  you  approach,  he  rises 
to  meet  you,  be  sure  that  he  is  a  servant  of  Christ,  and 
listen  to  him  obediently.  If  he  does  not  rise  up,  but  treats 
you  contemptuously, — you  are  the  more  numerous  body, 
and  can  show  contempt  in  your  turn  ^ ! '  Some  grains  of 
fact  may  lie  in  this  anecdote;  yet  the  Britons  would 
hardly  have  made  so  much  depend  on  so  little.  But,  if 
they  consulted  any  such  adviser,  or  agreed  to  apply  so 
purely  personal  a  test,  it  is  clear,  on  Bede's  own  showing, 
as,  indeed,  it  would  be  clear  apart  from  this  incident  in  the 
story,  that  they  did  not  deem  themselves  bound  to  accept 
the  exhortations  of  a  bishop  sent  from  Rome,  and  thus  far 
a  representative  of  Rome^  as  such.  They  treated  the 
question  as  open :  Shall  we  adopt  his  ways,  or  shall  we 
not  ?  They  came,  as  they  had  resolved,  to  the  meeting, 
after  Augustine  had  taken  his  seat.    He  continued  sitting  * : 

^  'Procurate  ut  ipse  prior,'  &c. 

^  *  Et  ipse  spernatur  a  vobis.' 

3  Lingard  argues  that  the  subjects  of  Papal  authority  and  British  inde- 
pendence did  not  come  into  consideration;  Angl.-S.  Ch.  i.  380.  This  is 
futile.  The  British  delegates  could  not  fail  to  know  that  Augustine  did 
come  to  them  as  specially  empowered  from  Rome.  And  their  reverence 
for  Rome  did  not,  in  their  view,  commit  them  to  obedience  to  its 
emissary.  But  it  must  have  done  so,  had  it  included  a  belief  in  Papal 
supremacy.  And  the  relation  of  the  Celtic  Churches  to  Rome  was  one  of 
veneration  without  subjection,  as  is  manifest  from  the  language  of  such 
a  typical  Celtic  saint  as  Columban.  See  e.g.  his  fifth  epistle,  to 
Boniface  IV.  Even  to  Gregory  the  Great  he  had  written  in  a  peremptory 
tone  on  the  Easter  question,  Ep,  i. 

*  'Sederet  in  sella,'  Bede.  '  Romano  more  in  sella  residens,'  Bromton. 
Various  explanations  of  '  this  apparent  discom*tesy '  are  offered  in  the 
English  '  Life  of  St.  Augustine,'  p.  229.  After  all,  the  writer  pleads  that 
at  worst  it  was  but  *  an  excusable  negligence,*  and  blames  the  British 
bishops  for  '  taking  such  a  trifle  so  much  to  heart.'  Elmham  boldly  con- 
tends that  it  would  not  have  been  '  decens  ut  tarn  feros  et  erroneos  .  .  . 


96  Augusttne^s  terms  rejected, 

CHAP.  III.  he  probably  thought  that  he  must  assert  his  dignity  as 
archbishop,  and  did  so  in  a  manner  as  deficient  in  tact 
as  in  courtesy.  According  to  Bede,  the  Britons  at  once 
showed  temper,  '  charged  him  with  pride,  and  made  a  point 
of  contradicting  all  that  he  said.'  He  intended,  no  doubt, 
to  speak  with  calmness  and  moderation :  '  You  go  against 
our  custom,  or  rather  that  of  the  Universal  Church,  on 
many  points:  but  if  you  are  willing  to  yield  on  these 
three  ^,  to  keep  Easter  at  its  right  time,  to  perform  baptism 
according  to  the  manner  of  the  holy  Roman  and  apostolic - 
Church,  and  to  join  with  us  in  preaching  the  word  of  the 
Lord  to  the  English, — we  will  quietly  bear  with  your  other 
Failure  of  practices,  however  contrary  to  our  own.'  A  speech  so 
ference."  worded  would  seem  magisterial  to  the  sensitive  and  sus- 
picious auditors.  We  are  told  tliat  they  said  to  each  other, 
*  If  just  now  he  would  not  rise  to  greet  us,  he  will  be  yet 
more  overbearing  if  we  begin  to  obey  him ; '  and  that 
thereupon  they  gave  their  decisive  answer,  'We  will  do 
none  of  these  things  which  you  require,  nor  will  we  have 
you  as  our  archbishop  '^!     Not  till  this  moment,  as  far  as 

assurgendo  inflaret,'  after  having  granted  them  a  second  conference  ; 
p.  105.     A  reference  to  *  sellae  plectiles  '  is  in  Greg.  Ep,  xii.  19. 

^  Pearson  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  '  fresh  from  the  large-minded  con- 
cessions of  Gregory,  Augustine  made  up  his  mind  to  great  concessions,  but 
he  felt  that  three  points  were  too  important  to  be  sacrificed  ; '  Hist.  Engl. 
i.  125.  One  of  the  points  waived  was  evidently  the  tonsure.  Another, 
as  evidently,  was  the  use  of  a  peculiar  liturgy  ;  Warren,  Lit.  and  Kit.  of 
Celtic  Ch.  p.  76.  Such  concessions  are  ignored  by  those  who  exaggerate 
Augustine's  stiffness. 

^  This  phrase  (cp.  Bede,  ii.  i,  7,  iii.  29)  has  not  the  sense  of  'the  one 
Catholic  and  Apostolic  Church '  of  the  Creed,  but  refers  to  the  distinctive 
claim  of  Rome  among  Western  Churches  to  be  of  apostolic  foundation.  Cp. 
the  phrase  'apostolicus  papa,'  cf.  Bede,  iv.  i,  and  Lib.  Diurn.  Pont,  n,  2. 

^  The  speech  ascribed  to  Dunod,  disowning  the  supremacy  of  the  Pope, 
or,  as  it  is  expressed,  of  *  liim  whom  ye  call  Pope  and  Father  (Daad)  of 
fathers,*  and  describing  the  British  Church  as  under  the  government  of 
the  '  Esgob  Kaerllion,'  is  spurious,  *  drawn  up  by  some  mediaeval  Welsli 
antiquary,  and  probably  enough  suggested  by  Bede's  account  of  the  matter,' 
as  *  it  truly  represents  the  feeling  of  the  tlien  British  Church  towards 
Rome  ;'  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  149.  It  was  first  edited  by  Spelman,  and 
accepted  by  Stillingfleet,  ii.  536,  and  Bramhall,  i.  162,  &c.  See  it  in 
Migne,  Patrol.  Lat.  Ixxx.  22,  and,  in  Welsh  and  Latin,  in  Smith's  Bede, 
p.  716.  Geoffrey  makes  Dunod  say  that  they  owed  no  subjection  to 
Augustine,  for  they  had  an  *  archipraesul  *  of  their  own, — and  that  they 


Augustine^ s  prediction,  97 

Bede's  tale  goes,  had  the  archiepiscopal  pretensions  of  chap.  m. 
Augustine  been  mooted ;  but  the  Britons  must  at  any  rate 
have  been  aware  from  the  first  that  he  claimed  that  rank 
among  the  English,  and  must  have  presumed  that  his 
proposals  would  involve  their  recognition  of  it,  in  case  they 
agreed  to  work  with  him.  He  had  not  been  faultless  in 
his  conduct  of  the  matter :  but  even  in  the  vehement  words 
which  at  last  broke  from  him  ^ ,  one  sees  that,  what  stirred 
him  to  grief  and  anger  was  not  so  much  their  defiance  of 
his  authority,  as  their  refusal  to  aid  in  his  missionary 
enterprise.  '  If  you  will  not  accept  peace  with  brethren, 
you  will  have  to  accept  war  from  enemies :  if  you  will  not 
preach  the  way  of  life  to  the  English,  you  will  be  punished 
with  death  by  English  hands.'  These  words  have  met  with 
very  opposite  treatment,  in  consequence  of  a  tragedy  which 
happened  some  years  after  Augustine's  death,  probably  in 
A.D.  613^.  Ethelfrid  the  'Fierce'  or  the  'Destroyer,'  who, 
ten  years  earlier,  had  utterly  broken  the  aggressive  power 
of  the  Argyllshire  Scots  at  Degsastone'\  turned  his  arms 
against  the  Britons,  perhaps  because  they  had  sheltered 

'would  not  bestow  their  preaching  on  their  enemies;*  viii.  4  (xi.  12). 
The  Llandaff  story  (see  Usher,  Antiq.  p.  46),  that  Oudoceus  of  Llandaff 
submitted  to  the  authority  of  Augustine,  is  a  gross  fiction  ;  see  Rees, 
Welsh  Saints,  p.  274.  He  observes  that  at  the  conference  there  was  no 
question  between  the  archbishop  of  the  English  and  a  British  metro- 
politan ;  which  would  show  that  the  archbishopric  of  Caerleon  was 
extinct,  '  z/  indeed  it  had  ever  been  firmly  established;*  ib.  p.  291. 
'  There  is  no  real  evidence  of  the  existence  of  a  real  archiepiscopate  in 
Wales  during  the  Welsh  period  ;  *  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  148. 

^  ^  Fertur  minitans  praedixisse,'  Bede.  *  In  the  anguish  of  disappoint- 
ment,* Lingard,  A.-S.  C.  i.  71.  Milner  (Hist.  Ch.  cent.  6.  c.  i)  charges 
him  with  '  ambitious  encroachment,'  but  believes  also  that  he  was  acting 
*  from  charitable  views.* 

"^  Annal.  Camb.  a.  613.  This  date,  rather  than  605,  or  607  (the  two 
readings  of  Sax.Chron.),  is  adopted  in  Annals  of  Engl.  p.  30  ;  Haddan  and 
Stubbs,  iii.  41  ;  Guest,  Orig.  Celt.  ii.  309  ;  Green,  Making  of  England, 
p.  240. 

^  Bede,  i.  34  ;  S.  Chron.  a.  603.  The  kingdom  of  the  Scots  of  Dalriada, 
then  held  by  Aidan,  seventh  of  the  line,  had  been  founded  100  years 
before,  by  Fergus  M6r,  son  of  Ere  ;  but  their  original  immigration  into 
North  Britain  cannot  be  dated.  See  Skene,  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  140  ; 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  105.  'Degsastan*  seems  to  be  Dawston  near 
Jedburgh  ;  Skene,  i.  162  ;  Green,  p.  233 ;  but  others  place  it  at  Dalston, 
near  Carlisle.     On  Aidan's  'wars '  see  Rhys,  Celtic  Britain,  p.  157. 

H 


98 


Battle  of  Chester. 


CHAP.  III. 


Battle  of 
Chester. 


Edwin,  the  heir  of  the  Deiran  realm  which  he  had  annexed 
to  Bernicia  ;  and  in  this  campaign  he  besieged  the  northern 
'  City  of  Legions,'  the  ancient  Roman  town  of  Chester.  The 
inhabitants  risked  a  battle :  just  before  it  began,  Ethelfrid 
saw,  '  standing  apart  in  a  place  of  comparative  security,' 
a  large  body  of  British  priests,  including  a  number  of 
monks  from  the  neighbouring  monastery  of  Bangor  Iscoed, 
who,  after  a  three  days'  fast,  had  come  under  the  escort  of 
BrocmaiP,  king  of  Powys,  to  pray  for  the  success  of  their 
countrymen.  '  If,'  said  the  stem  Northumbrian,  '  they  are 
crying  to  their  God  against  us,  then  are  they  fighting 
against  us  by  curses,  though  not  with  arms.  Attack 
them  first ! '  It  was  done,  and  only  fifty  escaped ;  Broc- 
mail  having  fled  without  striking  a  blow  for  those  who 
had  been  entrusted  to  his  protection.  Such  was  'the 
battle  of  Cair  Legion,  wherein  the  holy  men  were  slain,' 
as  it  was  described  in  Irish  records  ^ ;  '  the  battle  of  the 
orchard  of  Bangor^,'  as  the  Welsh  sometimes  called  it, 
from  the  subsequent  destruction  of  that  great  house  with 
all  its  literary  treasures:  the  remains  of  Bangor  Iscoed 
exhibited,  centuries  later,  a  mass  of  ruined  walls  and 
cloisters,  and  the  rubbish  of  two  gates  of  the  town,  called 
Forth  Kleis  and  Forth  Wgan,  a  mile  apart*.  Chester  was 
taken,  and  apparently  destroyed"^ :    but  the  slaughter  of 

^  Or  Brochtcel ;  Rees,  Welsh  Saints,  p.  208.  According  to  the  Ann. 
Cambr.,  he  survived  till  662,  and  so  Rhys  considers  him  to  have  been  '  told 
off  to  guard  the  priests  '  on  account  of  his  youth.  But  of  the  three  British 
chiefs  who  fell  in  the  battle,  Guest  considers  one  to  have  been  his  grandson  ; 
and  therefore  describes  Brochmael  as  advanced  in  life  at  the  time  (ii.  308). 

"^  Tighernach  ;  O'Connor,  Rer.  Hib.  Scr.  ii.  182.  On  this  battle  see 
Freeman,  Engl.  Towns  and  Districts,  p.  278. 

^  Rees,  Welsh  Saints,  p.  293. 

*  Malmesb.  Gest.  Reg,  i.  47  ;  and  Vaughan,  ap.  Camden,  i.  666. 

^  Chester  remained  desolate  until  it  was  restored  by  ^thelfled,  Alfred's 
daughter,  in  907.  See  Palgrave,  p.  455  :  '  The  capture  of  the  City  of 
Legions  was  long  lamented  by  the  Britons,*  and  it  seems  to  have  been 
followed  by  the  loss  of  the  country  between  the  Dee  and  the  northern 
Derwent  (Rhys,  p.  138).  But  about  the  same  time,  they  had  a  triumph 
over  Ceolwulf  of  Wessex  in  the  battle  of  Tintern,  when  the  royal  hermit 
Tewdric,  once  king  of  Morganwg  (Glamorganshire)  and  ever  victorious  in 
war,  left  his  cell  at  *  the  cry  of  his  people,'  and  secured  their  victory  at 
the  cost  of  his  own  life,  for  one  of  the  foemen  turned  round  in  his  flight 
and  wounded  him  with  a  spear.      According  to  the  legend,  the  dying 


Batik  of  Chester,  99 

the  ecclesiastics  was  regarded  by  their  countrymen  as  the  chap.  nr. 
most  tragic  feature  of  the  event  ^,  by  -Bede  and  the  Saxon 
Chronicler  as  a  fulfilment  of  Augustine's  '  prophecy ' :  and 
Bede  so  far  forgets  his  better  nature  as  to  apply  the  word 
niiefandae  to  the  patriotic  British  host^.  On  the  other 
hand,  some  moderns,  hostile  to  Augustine's  memory,  have 
imagined  ^  that  he  himself,  in  revenge  for  the  obstinacy  of 
Welsh  bishops,  had  induced  the  Northumbrian  'Destroyer' 
to  slaughter  the  Welsh  priests :  whereas  the  battle  took 
place,  according  to  Bede,  *  long '  after  his  own  death,  which 
was  not  later  than  605 ; — and  even  if  it  had  been  fought 
in  his  lifetime,  he  had  as  little  interest  with  the  heathen 
Ethelfrid*  as  he  had  heart  for  so  atrocious  a  suggestion. 

He  returned  home  in  bitter  disappointment.  W^hether 
he  visited  any  other  parts  of  Saxon  Britain,  endeavouring 
to  do  what  he  could  for  their  heathen  inhabitants,  we 
cannot  tell:   the  stories  which  ascribe  to  him  some  such 

hermit  king  was  borne  in  a  wain  to  a  place  near  the  Severn,  where  he 
bade  his  attendants  depart,  and  expired  alone  ;  Mon.  Anglic,  vi.   1223  ; 
Turner,  i.  334. 
^  See  Scott's  lines,  written  for  an  old  Welsh  air,  *  The  Monks'  March  :' — 
'  Woe  to  Brocmail's  feeble  hand,  • 

Woe  to  Olfrid's  bloody  brand, 
Woe  to  Saxon  cruelty, 
0  miserere,  Dominel' 
2  So   'gentis  perfidae/    'perfidi,'   which  might  mean   'untrue   to  the 
obligations  of  their  faith  *  (in  iii.  7,  a  refusal  to  accept  the  faith  is  *  per- 
fidia').     He  reflects  bitterly  on  the  Britons  in  other  passages,  ii.  20,  v.  22. 
For  this  he  has  been  severely  blamed  :  but  he  was  thinking  of  the  repulse 
of  Augustine's  overtures,  of  the  cruelties  of  a  British  invader  of  Northum- 
bria,  and  of  the  Britons'   contempt  for  English  Christianity.     That  his 
feeling  was  not  simply  anti-Celtic,   is  proved  by  his  cordial  language 
respecting  the  Irish  as  a  nation,  iii.  27 ;  iv.  26.    And  he  does  once  praise 
a  *  Briton '  for  discernment  ('  sagaci  animo'),  iii.  10. 

'  A  charge  *  too  absurd  to  merit  any  serious  notice  ; '  Milner,  cent.  6. 
c.  I.  *An  abominable  calumny  of  some  writers  ; '  Lanigan,  11,379.  'A 
crowd  of  modern  writers  have  re-echoed  the  calumny;*  Lingard,  A.-S. 
Ch.  i.  72.  *  A  preposterous  libel ; '  Haddan's  Remains,  p.  316.  To  deny 
it  was,  in  1673,  and  at  Oxford,  to  incur  suspicion  of  Popery  !  (see  Ant. 
Wood's  Life,  p.  191.  Writing  thirty  years  later,  Inett  says,  *  I  willingly 
yield  to  the  side  of  charity  ;'  Orig.  Angl.  i.  35").  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth 
had  suggested  it,  by  the  absurd  fiction  that  '  Edelbertus  Edelfridum  insti- 
mulavit*  (viii.  4). 

*  How  could  such  a  *  prophecy  hardly  fail  to  hasten  its  own  fulfilment '  ? 
Milman,  Lat.  Chr.  ii.  234.    See  Hook's  good  remarks,  Archbishops,  i.  73. 

H  2 


of  London. 


TOO  Bishopric  of  London, 

CHAP.  III.  journeys  have  no  sufficient  authority  ^  But  he  found 
a  prospect  opening,  before  him  among  the  East-Saxons, 
whose  king,  Sigebert  I,  or  Sabert,  was  Ethelbert's  nephew 
as   well   as   vassal,   being   the   son   of    his   sister   Ricula. 

Bi.shopric  Mellitus  was  sent  to  London,  and  converted  Sabert :  in 
consequence,  he  was  made  bishop  of  London  in  the  begin- 
ning of  604^,  and  Ethelbert  and  Sabert  were  both  con- 
cerned in  the  erection  of  a  cathedral  church  on  the  site  of 
the  present  St.  Paul's,  which  had  been  formerly  occupied 
by  a  Roman  camp.  The  story  that  a  temple  of  Diana  had 
stood  there  -^  is  at  least  doubtful :  but  an  altar  of  Diana, 
discovered  near  the  spot  not  very  many  years  since,  may 
have  belonged  to  the  praetorium*.  It  was  afterwards 
believed  that  Sabert  had  also  been  the  founder  of 
a  monastery  of  St.  Peter  which  was  called  'the  West 
Minster,'  on  'Thomey'  Island,  in  the  'great  marsh'  then 
formed  by  the  Thames  as  it  bent  south-westward^.    Angus- 

^  E.g.  Thorn  says,  X  Script.  1760,  that  he  'sowed  the  seed  of  God's 
word  everywhere  throughout  the  whole  land  of  the  English/  always  '  pedes 
sine  vehiculo  '  :  and  Gocelin,  in  his  longer  Life  of  Augustine,  37  ff.,  makes 
him  work  miracles  at  York^  e.g.  on  a  leper, — inflict  a  grotesque  punish- 
ment on  some  Dorsetshire  rustics  who  had  fastened  fishes'  tails  to  his  and 
his  brethren's  garments  (s.  41), — and  even  visit  Colman  'king  of  Ireland,' 
and  baptize  the  future  Irish  saint  Livinus  (s.  48  ;  cp.  Vit.  S.  Livini,  Migne, 
Patr.  Lat.  Ixxxix.  871,  873).  These  stories  grew  up  out  of  a  desire  to  make 
Augustine  apostle  of  all  England  in  the  sense  of  having  preached  through- 
out it.  Cp.  the  legend  in  Thomas  of  Ely  (Angl.  Sac.  i.  594 \  that  he 
founded  a  church  in  Cratunden,  '  a  mile  from  the  present  city'  of  Ely  ; 
and  the  weird  story  of  the  '  dead-alive '  excommunicate  and  excommuni- 
cator,  told  by  Bromton  with  a  prefatory  reference  to  Augustine's  preach- 
ing in  Oxfordshire  ;  X  Script.  736. 

2  Bede,  ii.  3. 

'  In  the  later  Middle  Ages  the  '  festum  Sancti  Adelberti '  was  a  festival 
of  the  first  class  at  St.  Paul's  ;  Statutes  of  St.  Paul's,  ii.  52. 

*  See  Dugdale's  Hist,  of  St.  Paul's,  p.  2,  on  the  structure  *  called  Diana's 
Chambers,  and  the  ox-heads  digged  up '  in  the  time  of  Edward  I ;  and 
Milman,  Annals  of  St.  Paul's,  p.  5. 

^  Thorn  ascribes  the  foundation  of  St.  Peter's  td  'a  citizen  of  London  at 
the  suggestion  of  Ethelbert  ; '  X  Script.  1768.  This  was  a  tradition  which 
in  Malmesbury  became  mixed  up  with  a  wild  story  about  a  dedication  of 
the  church  by  St.  Peter  himself;  Gest.  Pont.  p.  141.  So  Ailred  of  Kievaulx, 
in  X  Script.  385.  A  *  West  Minster '  did  exist,  as  a  church  of  some  im- 
portance, long  before  the  Confessor's  great  foundation  ;  Freeman,  Norm. 
Conq.  ii.  511.  See  Sir  Walter  Besant's  charming  volume  on  'Westmin- 
ster,' p.  7.     He  argues  convincingly  that  the  spot,  instead  of  being  wild  or 


Bishopric  of 'Rochester.  loi 

tine,  when  he  consecrated  Mellitus,  may  have  indulged  in  chap.  m. 
expectations  of  successful  mission-work  in  the  great  city 
and  its  neighbourhood:  but  his  hopes  were  not  to  be 
speedily  realized.  In  no  part  of  England  was  there  so 
much  tenacity  of  heathenism,  so  much  resistance  to  the 
new  faith,  as  in  the  'emporium  of  many  nations \'  and 
generally  in  the  East- Saxon  realm.  More  than  one  effort"^ 
was  necessary  before  the  church  of  London  or  the  parts 
adjacent  could  be  considered  as  firmly  restored  upon  its 
Saxon  basis:  and  it  might  seem  that  Augustine  soon 
became  conscious  of  some  of  the  difficulties  that  lay  in 
the  path  of  the  new  bishop. 

Matters  were  easier  in  regard  to  that  district  of  Kent^  Bishopric 
which  was  dependent  on  the  little  city  of  Rochester,  or  ^^j.  ''^^^^^' 
'  Hrof 's  Castle,'  which  in  British  times  had  been  called 
Durobrivse,  from  'the  swift  stream'  of  the  Medway.  There 
Ethel bert  built  a  church,  which,  in  fond  remembrance  of 
his  Roman  monastery,  Augustine  dedicated  in  honour  of 
St.  Andrew.  The  '  Bretwalda '  was  bounteous  in  his  gifts 
to  this  church^,  as  to  that  of  London;   and  Justus  was 

*  desolate,'  was  a  '  Roman  station,  a  centre  of  traffic '  of  all  sorts,  ^  bustling, 
noisy,  frequented  ; '  and  he  thinks  it  probable  that  the  church  founded 
early  in  the  '  seventh  century '  was  in  fact  an  earlier  church  restored. 
Certainly  the  phrase  'loco  terribili,'  in  the  charter  ascribed  to  Offa  (and 
preserved  in  the  chapter-house),  has  been  quite  misunderstood  for  want  of 
remembering  that  it  is  borrowed  from  the  Vulgate  of  Gen.  xxiv.  17,  and 
means  simply  '  awful '  as  being  sacred.  Bede's  silence  would  not  disprove 
the  tradition,  for  he  might  not  think  it  necessary  to  mention  a  foundation 
which  was  not  connected  with  the  bishopric.  The  traditional  tomb  of 
Sabert  is  to  the  south  of  the  altar  in  the  present  church. 

*  Bede,  ii.  3.  Cp.  Tacitus,  Ann.  xiv.  33,  'Londinium  ,  .  .  copia  negotia- 
torum  .  .  .  maxime  celebre.'  *  The  commercial  fame  of  London  dates  from 
the  early  days  of  Roman  dominion  ; '  Freeman,  i.  281. 

^  See  Bede,  iii.  22,  30 ;  cp.  ib.  7, 

^  It  has  been  thought  that  there  was  even  then  a  sub-king  of  West  Kent. 
Yet  see  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  198.  Malmesbury  describes  Rochester  as 
a  town  of  narrow  area,  but,  from  its  high  position  above  a  very  swift  river, 
not  easily  accessible  to  foes  ;  Gest.  Pontif.  p.  133.  Bede  says  that  *  Hrof 
was  a  former  'chief  man'  of  the  Angles.  Elton  thinks  'Hrof  an 
imaginary  person  ;  Origins  of  Engl.  Hist.  i.  368. 

*  See  the  '  Charter  of  Ethelbert  to  the  church  of  Rochester,'  Kemble, 
Cod.  Diplom.  A.-S.,  i.  i.  It  is  subsequent  to  the  death  of  Augustine.  The 
King  begins  by  admonishing  his  son  Eadbald,  and  then  addresses  the 
Apostle  :  '  To  thee,  Saint  Andrew,  and  to  thy  church  which  is  established 


I02  '  Church  and  Realm  '  in  Kent. 

CHAP.  III.  consecrated  as  bishop  of  the  new  diocese,  which  for  ages 
lield  a  specially  close  relation  of  dependence  on  the  arch- 
diocese of  Canterbury, — the  successors  of  Justus  being, 
beyond  all  other  suffragans,  under  the  control  of,  and 
expected  to  do  episcopal  work  for,  the  successors  of 
Augustine  ^. 

The  grants  made  by  Ethelbert  to  churches,  and  his 
recognition  of  the  status  of  bishops  and  clergy  within  his 
dominions,  led  naturally  to  the  promulgation  of  certain 
enactments  under  the  sanction  of  his  Witan ;  that  is,  the 
assembly  of  the  freemen  of  his  kingdom, — which  was 
practically  the  assembly  of  the  great  officers  and  the 
'  king's  thegns,' — bearing  the  title  of  the  Assembly  of  the 
Church  Wise,  or  Witenasremot^.  Thus  Bede  tells  us  that  Ethel- 
by  Witan.  ^^^1"^  introduced  among  the  English,  '  with  the  counsel  of 
the  Wise  Men,  judicial  decrees  after  the  Roman  model, 
which,  written  out  in  the  English  tongue,  are  extant  and 
are  observed  to  this  day.  .  .  Among  which  he  first  laid 
down  the  mode  of  satisfaction  to  be  made  by  any  one 
who  should  take  away  by  theft  anything  belonging  to  the 
church,  or  the  bishop,  or  the  other  orders ;  inasmuch  as  his 
intention  was  to  afford  protection  to  those  whose  persons 
and  whose  teaching  he  had  accepted  •\'  Accordingly,  among 
the  extant  Laws  of  Ethelbert*,  and  indeed  first  among 
them,  stands  a  brief  ordinance  fixing  a  scale  of  payments 

in  the  city  Ilrofihrevi,  where  Justus,  bishop,  is  seen  to  preside,  I  deliver 
a  small  portion  of  my  land.'  The  exact  limits  are  stated  in  Saxon,  begin- 
ning from  'Southgate,'  going  northward  to  '  Street,'  then  eastward  towards 
'  Broadgate.'  Kemble  does  not  doubt  its  authenticity  :  but  there  is  a 
difficulty  as  to  the  date ;  see  below.  The  Rochester  tradition  said  that 
Ethelbert  gave  to  the  church  some  land  thence  called  Priestfield,  south  of 
the  city,  and  other  land  towards  the  north  ;  Angl.  Sacra,  i.  333. 

^  The  archbishop  had  the  appointment  to  this  bishopric  until  a.  d.  1148. 
On  this  '  dependent '  position  of  Rochester,  see  Freeman,  iv.  365.  The 
bishop  of  Rochester  is  the  ^  cross- bearer '  of  the  pro'vince. 

*  See  Freeman,  i.  100 ;  Kemble,  ii.  194  ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  140 
(or  119). 

•"  Bede,  ii.  5  :  '  Qui  inter  caetera  bona,'  &c.  See  Palgrave,  Engl.  Common- 
wealth, p.  44  ;  Haddan's  Remains,  p.  306. 

*  Thorpe,  Anc.  Laws,  p.  i  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  42.  Palgrave,  Engl. 
Comm.  p.  45,  doubts  the  integrity  of  the  text  of  the  compilation  made  by 
bishop  Emulf  in  the  twelfth  century. 


'  Church  and  Realm  '  in  Kent.  103 

— such  as  the  Saxon  law  called  hots  ^ — for  wrong  done  to  chap.  in. 
ecclesiastical  property  as  such;  in  case  of  property,  ov feoh, 
of  God  and  the  Church,  the  satisfaction  to  be  thus  made 
was  twelve-fold ;  for  a  bishop's  property,  eleven-fold ;  for 
a  priest's,  nine ;  for  a  deacon's,  six ;  for  an  inferior  cleric's, 
three.  For  violation  of  the  frith,  i.e.  the  peace  or  privi- 
leges, of  a  church  or  of  a  monastery  ^,  a  two-fold  '  bot '  was 
exacted.  Here,  then,  we  have  definite  proof  of  the  recog- 
nition of  Christianity  and  the  Church  by  the  '  Parliament,' 
so  to  speak,  of  the  first  English  Christian  king. 

Augustine's  life  was  now  drawing  to  a  close.  In  regard  Liturgical 
to  his  general  arrangements  for  the  new  English  Church,  n^ents! 
he  seems  to  have  made  but  little  use  of  Gregory's  sugges- 
tion to  be  eclectic  as  to  liturgical  practices.  He  established 
the  Roman  liturgy  on  the  whole  as  a  matter  of  course, 
but  apparently  inserted  in  it  the  Gallic  '  benedictio  populi ' 
already  mentioned  ^ ;  and  also  introduced  the  Gallic  '  Roga- 
tions,'   or    processional    litanies,   before    the    Ascension*. 

^  The  word  means  compensation  or  atonement  (bethring)  due  to  an 
injured  party.  See  Tiiorpe's  Glossary,  and  his  Ancient  Laws,  pp.  17,  28,  45 
(Ine's  laws',  71,  &c.  ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  208. 

^  Compare  Thorpe,  Anc.  Laws,  p.  9  (Alfred),  and  his  Glossary,  '  frith ' 
and  'grith.'  At  Beverley  and  at  Hexham' the  seat  of  him  who  claimed 
the  '  peace '  or  privilege  of  sanctuary  was  called  the  Frith-stool.  Compare 
the  'Peace  of  St.  Oswin '  at  Tynemouth.  See  also  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  37  ; 
Stevenson,  Pref.  to  Chron.  of  Abingdon,  p.  xlviii  ;  and  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch. 
1.  273  £f.  At  Durham  'the  culprit  who  sought  the  "  grith  "  or  "peace" 
of  St.  Cuthbert  was  safe  as  soon  as  he  clasped  the  ring  in  the  north  door.' 
As  to  British,  churches  Giraldus  says  (Descr.  Camb.  i.  18)  that  a  wide 
extent  of  ground  around  them  was  thus  privileged,  and  that  fugitives 
often  abused  their  '  immunity '  by  sallying  forth  on  fresh  raids  ;  see  too 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  225.  For  Gaul,  compare  first  Council  of  Orange  in 
449,  c.  5,  Mansi,  vi.  437,  and  first  of  Orleans,  in  511,  c.  i,  ib.  viii.  350; 
and  Gregory  of  Tours,  Hist.  Fr.  v.  14,  on  his  own  refusal  to  give  up 
Meroveus  :  also  ib.  ix.  3,  38.  See  also  Gregory  the  Great,  Ep.  x.  50  ;  and 
generally,  Bingham,  b.  viii.  c,  11  (vol.  ii.  p.  565),  and  Gothofred,  Codex 
Theodos.  t.iii.  p.  388,  on  laws  of  TheodosiusI,  Arcadius,  and  Theodosius  II, 
as  to  '  fugitives  to  churches.' 

^  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  295  :  comp.  Egbert's  Pontifical,  p.  58  ff.  Some 
variations  remained  up  to  the  Council  of  Clovesho,  in  747,  can.  13. 

*  P.  55.  Council  of  Clovesho,  c.  16,  'secundum  morem  priorum  nostro- 
rum.'  The  Eoman  'litanies'  on  St.  Mark's  day  was  adopted  by  that  Council. 
Archd.  Freeman  (Princ.  of  Div.  Serv.  i.  246)  conjectures  that  certain 
peculiarities  in  the  Old-English  daily  offices  as  compared  with  the  Roman 
were  originally  brought  in  by  Augustine  from  the  South  Gallic  rites,  as 


I04       Monastery  of  SS,  Peter  and  Paul, 

CHAP.  jii.   We  infer  from  a  letter  of  Alcuin  to  Eanbald  II,  arch- 
bishop of  York,  in  the  end  of  the  eighth  century,  that 
there  were  then  in  use  some  '  larger  sacramentaries '  repre- 
senting *  an  old  use,'  which  did  not  entirely  agree  with  the 
Roman  ^.     That  Augustine  never  thought  of  a  vernacular 
Liturgy  as  at  least  ultimately  attainable  for  the  English 
was  indeed  an  error,  but  under  the  circumstances  '  natural 
Monastery  and   pgcrdonable  ^Z      His  interest  in  the  last  year  of   his 
Peter  and  episcopate  was  much  taken  up,  we  may  assume,  by  the 
Pjuii.  progress  of  his  new  monastery  outside  the  walls  of  Can- 

terbury ^.  He  saw  the  walls  of  the  church  rise  higher  and 
higher,  but  was  not  permitted  to  witness  its  completion. 
He  could,  however,  make  all  the  essential  arrangements 
for  the  foundation  and  constitution  of  the  house :  by  his 
exhortation,  says  Bede"^,  Ethelbert  built  the  charch,  and 
enriched  it  with  divers  gifts;  and  he  selected  his  old 
companion   Peter   to   be   the   first   abbot  ^   of    this   house 

probably  constructed  by  Cassian  on  an  Eastern  model.  But  it  is  not  on 
the  whole  a  likely  conjecture.  The  Council  of  Clovesho,  c.  15,  prescribes 
adherence  to  the  Roman  use  for  the  canonical  hours.  A  few  features  long 
peculiar  to  the  Old-English  Ordinal  are  thought  by  Maskell  to  be  probably 
traceable  to  the  Celtic  Church  ;  Mon.  Ritual,  ii,  209,  211,  and  see  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  i.  140. 

1  Alcuin,  Ep.  171:  Op.  i.  231.  Cp.  Ep.  50,  *Non  despiciant  Romanes 
discere  ordines.'  ^  Freeman,  Norm.  Conq.  i.  32. 

^  Elmham,  p.  iii,  says  that  at  Christmas,  605,  Ethelbert,  in  a  council 
of  clergy  and  laity,  confirmed  and  enlarged  the  grants  to  this  monastery. 
He  then  gives  the  so-called  second  charter,  reciting  the  boundaries  of  the 
property.  See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  55,  Elmham  becomes  rhapsodical  : 
*  Eja,  vere  nostra  Augustea  regia  ! ' 

*  Bede,  i.  33  :  '  Fecit  autem  ...  in  quo,  ejus  hortatu,'  &c. 

^  A  document  called  a  '  bulla,'  or  'privilegium  sub  bulla  plumbea,'  pro- 
fessing to  come  from  Augustine,  and  exhorting  his  successors  to  '  ordain  ' 
the  abbots  of  this  monastery,  but  not  to  claim  authoiity  over  them, — to 
treat  them  as  colleagues  in  the  Lord's  work,— is  clearly  an  '  Augustinian  ' 
invention;  see  it  in  Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  6;  Elmham,  p.  119.  Such 
'  privilegia  '  were,  at  this  period  and  later,  often  granted  by  bishops,  e.  g. 
St.  Landry's,  or  Landeric's,  to  St.  Denis  (Mansi,  xic  61) ;  but  the  language 
of  the  Augustinian  charter  betrays  it.  Comp.  a  privilegium  of  Bertfrid  of 
Amiens  to  Corbey  (ib.  107),  and  oneof  Marculf  (ib.  113).  On  such  privilegia 
see  Guizot,  Civil,  in  Fr.,  lect.  15.  He  gives  the  usual  formula.  See  a 
curious  letter  of  Archbishop  Peckham  to  the  convent  of  St.  Augustine's, 
'  Licet  in  ipso  vestro  sancto  monasterio,  et  quibusdam  locis  aliis  et  ecclesiis, 
a  jurisdictione  nostra  exempti  esse  credamini,'  &c. :  Peckham's  Registr. 
No.  64  (vol.  i.  p.  74). 


Date  of  Augustine s  Death.  105 

of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul,  a  choice  which,  according  to  the  chap.  m. 
monastic  documents,  was  confirmed  by  the  royal  nomina- 
tion ^.  The  last  year  of  Augustine's  life  must  have  been 
either  604  or  605.  For  tlie  earlier  date — in  the  absence 
of  any  help  from  Bede  or  the  Saxon  Chronicle — is  cited 
the  alleged  charter  of  Ethelbert  to  the  Church  of  Rochester, 
which  is  dated  April  28,  604,  and  ignores  Augustine,  refer- 
ring to  his  successor  as  the  bishop  of  Canterbury :  but  this 
would  place  Augustine's  death  earlier  than  the  May  of  that 
year,  whereas  he  died  on  the  26th  of  a  May^.  Later 
authorities  differ :  the  chronicles  of  St.  Augustine's  Abbey 
(i.e.  SS.  Peter  and  Paul's)  give  605,  an  earlier  annalist'^ 
604 :  and  there  is  a  difference  as  to  whether  the  day  of 
his  death  was  a  Tuesday  or  a  Wednesday,  May  26  being 
a  Tuesday  in  604,  a  Wednesday  in  605.  Probability  would 
point  to  605,  as  allowing  more  time  for  the  arrangements 
of  Augustine  and  Ethelbert  in  regard  to  London  and 
Rochester,  after  the  return  of  the  former  from  his  con- 
ferences at  Augustine's  Oak*.  One  act  which  the  arch- 
bishop performed  '  while  yet  in  health,'  but  shortly  before 
his  end, —  his  last  public  act^ — was  the  consecration  of 
Laurence  to  be  his  future  successor^.  It  was  an  act, 
strictly  speaking,  which  the  ancient  canons  forbade :  his 
own  great  namesake^  had  been  ill  at  ease  on  observing 
that  the  text  of  a  Nicene  canon  '^  seemed  to  tell  against  the 
consecration  of  a  bishop  as  coadjutor  and  future  successor 
by  the  actual  bishop  of  the  see; — but,  fairly  interpreted, 

*  The  (spurious)  charter  of  Ethelbert.  ranked  as  'third,'  uses  remark- 
able language  :  '  Cum  consilio  .  .  .  Augustini  .  .  .  Petrum  elegi,  eisque  .  .  . 
abbatem  praeposui.'     Elmham,  p.  114. 

^  See  the  epitaph  in  Bede,  ii.  3  ;  'Septimo  Kal.  Junii '  (May  26). 

^  Florence  of  Worcester.  Thorn  says,  c.  i.  11  (X  Script.  1765),  that 
Augustine's  death  has  been  erroneously  placed  by  many  in  613,  and  that 
he  died  in  605.  Smith  adopts  605,  and  says  that  the  chronology  from  which 
Thorn  took  his  computation  clearly  points  to  a  Wednesday  as  the  day  of 
the  week,  and  to  605  as  the  year  (p.  81).  See  the  '  Chronologia '  in  X 
Script.  2229. 

*  Hussey  decides  for  605.  Haddan  and  Stubbs  for  604. 

*  Bede,  ii.  4 :  *  Successit  Augustino  .  ,  .  quem  ipse  idcirco  adhuc  vivens 
ordinaverat.' 

*  St.  Augustine,  Ep.  213. 

'  Nic.  Can.  8  :  tVa  /i^  kv  t-^  iroXtt  5vo  iiriaKoiroi  Siaiv. 


io6 


Consecration  of  Laurence, 


CHAP.  III.  the  words  did  not  condemn  such  a  proceeding,  which  had 
been  resorted  to  in  several  cases  before  Augustine  of  Hippo 
was  thus  raised  to  the  episcopate  ^  However,  exceptions 
were  recognized  in  regard  to  such  rules  as  were  embodied 
in  a  canon  of  the  Council  of  Antioch  in  341,  prohibiting 
the  consecration  of  a  future  successor  by  a  living  bishop  ^. 
St.  Afchanasius  (who,  indeed,  did  not  recognize  that  coun- 
cil) had  thus  consecrated  his  friend  Peter  ^;  and,  what 
seemed  more  to  the  purpose,  the  majority  of  the  '  Latins ' 
in  Jerome's  time  ^  held  that  St,  Peter,  as  bishop  of  Rome, 
had  consecrated  Clement  to  succeed  him ; — so  that  Bede 
expressly  describes  Augustine  as  having  followed  the 
example  of  the  chief  of  the  Apostles.  '  But  why  did  he  not 
pass  on  the  archiepiscopate  to  Mellitus  ?  '  The  question  is 
twofold.  Why  did  he  ignore  Gregory's  evident  intention 
that  the  metropolitan  see  should  be  fixed  in  London? 
Clearly  because,  being  better  acquainted  than  the  Pope 
could  be  with  the  local  circumstances,  among  which, 
probably,  the  difficulties  of  mission-work  among  the 
inhabitants  of  London  would  hold  a  chief  place,  he  deemed 
himself  free  to  act  on  his  own  judgement,  which,  no  doubt, 
coincided  with  his  personal  feeling ;  for  his  affections  had 
become  closely  entwined  with  the  church  and  the  monas- 
teries of  Canterbury,  and  he  naturally  wished  the  archi- 
episcopate to  be  permanent  in  that  beloved  home^.  His 
resolution  has  determined  the  history  of  the  Church  of 
England  as  depending  on   the  see  of  Canterbury.     'But 


Arcli- 
bishopric 
fixed  at 
Canter- 
Imrv. 


1  Bixigham,  b.  ii.  c.  13.  s.  4  (vol.  i.  p.  180). 

^  Mansi,  ii.  131 7.  A  later  canon,  called  the  76th  Apostolic,  had  forbid- 
den a  bishop  to  consecrate  a  relative  to  succeed  him. 

^  Chronicon  Acephalum  :  '  Five  days  before  his  death  he  ordained  (con- 
secrated) Peter.* 

*  Jerome,  de  Vir.  Illustr.  15  ;  comp.  Comm.  in  Isai.  b.  14.  Rufinus  sug- 
gested a  modified  view,  that  Linus  and  Clement  were  both  bishops  at 
Rome  before  Peter's  death.  Cp.  Lightfoot's  St.  Clement,  i.  173,  274.  To 
this  Bede  refers  in  Hist.  Abb.  6.  That  Rufinus  was  but  inventing  a  hypo- 
thesis, see  Duchesne's  ed.  of  Lib.  Pontif.  i.  p.  Ixx. 

*  See  the  letter  of  Kenulf  king  of  Mercia  to  Leo  III,  stating  that 
Gregory  had  intended  London  to  be  metropolitical,  but  that  because 
Augustine  died  and  was  buried  in  Canterbury,  it  seemed  good  to  the 
Witan  (nostrae  gentis  sapientibus'  that  the  '■  metropolitanus  honor '  should 
abide  there.     Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  522.     See  above,  p.  75. 


Archbishopric  fixed  at  Canterbury,       107 

why  not  transfer  Mellitus  to  Canterbury,  or  else,  leaving  chap.  iir. 
him  to  his  London  work,  summon  Justus  to  the  greater 
Kentish  see  ? '  If  the  question  presented  itself  to  Augustine, 
he  probably  answered  it  by  considering  that  episcopal 
translations  were  technically,  at  any  rate,  discouraged  by 
Church  law  ^ ;  and  that  he  saw  a  man  well  qualified  for  the 
archbishopric  among  those  who  had  been  his  original  com- 
panions,— whose  hearts  he  had  comforted  and  inspirited  by 
the  letter  brought  from  Gregory,  who  had  travelled  with 
him  though  Frankish  districts,  had  stood  by  his  side  when 
he  first  confronted  Ethelbert,  and  had  raised  their  voices  in 
the  litany  along  the  slope  of  St  Martin's  hilL  This  friend 
was  Laurence,  On  his  head  the  feeble  hands  of  Augustine 
were  laid,  and  Augustine's  voice  uttered  the  solemn  prayers 
of  benediction  with  which  the  prelates  of  Latin  Christendom 
were  set  apart  for  their  work  'I  Laurence  was  now  quali- 
fied to  preside  over  the  'Church  of  the  English';  and 
although  Augustine's  last  days  may  have  been  partly 
saddened  by  the  thought  that  this  Church  had  not '  broken 
forth,  on  the  right  hand  and  the  left,'  with  anything  like 
the  amplitude  and  vigour  of  self- extension  which  the 
joyful  Christmastide  of  597  had  seemed  to  promise,  he 
would  take  comfort  in  hoping  that  those  who  came  after 
him  would  'see  the  glory  of  the  Lord  revealed'  in  some 
richer  spiritual  conquests,  and  some  stronger  and  broader 
consolidation  of  the  Church's  organic  unity.  It  was  in 
fact  the  latter  work,  rather  than  the  former,  which  was 
reserved  for  the  see  of  Canterbury, — and  that  after  some 
sixty  years  had  passed, 

Augustine  died,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  last  week  of  The  work 
May,  and  probably  in  605  ;  and  his  body  was  temporarily  tfnt"^"^" 
laid  '  outside,  but  close  to  ^'  the  yet  unfinished  church  of 

*  See  Bingham,  b.  vi.  c.  4.  s.  6. 

*  See  Muratori,  Lit.  Kom.  ii.  357,  for  the  long  'consecratio'  beginning, 
'Deus  honorum  omnium.' ..  *  Comple  in  sacerdote  tuo  ministerii  tui  sum- 
mam  .  .  .  Abundet  in  eo  constantia  fidei,  puritas  dilectionis,  sinceritas 
pacis.     Tribuas  ei  cathedram  episcopalem,'  &c.     Cp.  Egbert's  Pontif.  p.  2. 

'  Bede,  ii.  3.  See  Gocelin's  Hist.  Minor,  39  :  *  Regnas,  Augustine, 
Augustis  saeculi  nomine  et  dignitate  sublimior. ...  In  monasterio .  . .  recon- 
ditur  pretiosissimum  corpus  ejus  festivo  cum  jubilo.'     (Angl.-Sax.  ii.  70.) 


io8  Character  of  St.  Augustine. 

CHAP.  III.  liis  new  monastery.  The  brief  period  allotted  to  him  for 
work  as  a  missionary  bishop  should  modify  any  unkindly 
estimate  of  the  amount  of  work  that  was  done.  He  had 
at  any  rate  laid  the  foundation  '  nobly  ^ ' :  he  had  converted 
a  typical  English  monarch ;  he  had  baptized  multitudes  of 
Kentish  proselytes;  he  had  secured  a  formal  and  public 
acceptance,  by  a  national  assembly,  of  Christian  obligations, 
and  of  the  Church  as  an  organized  institution;  he  had 
rooted  in  Canterbury  a  future  centre  for  any  amount  of 
Church  extension ;  he  had  started  a  mission  in  London ;  he 
had  connected  the  reviving  Christianity  in  Britain  with 
the  culture  and  discipline  of  the  continental  Church. 
Briefly,  he  had  made  the  beginning,  opened  the  door, 
formed  the  precedents:  later  missionaries  in  England, 
who  had  other  opportunities,  whose  successes  covered 
a  wider  area,  were,  consciously  or  not,  carrying  on  the 
impulse  first  given  by  the  Gregorian  mission,  and  therein, 
by  him  whom  an  ancient  English  Council  ^,  when  appointing 
a  festival  in  his  honour,  described  as  having  brought  to  the 
English  people  '  the  knowledge  of  their  heavenly  country.' 
In  this  sense,  as  the  first  preacher  to  men  of  their  race,  he 
had  been  their  '  apostle.'  So  much  as  to  what  he  did.  As 
to  what  he  was  in  himself,  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  was 
a  man  of  genius,  or  of  signal  insight  into  human  nature,  or 
of  any  such  qualities  as  exercise  a  commanding  power  over 
men's  admiration,  or  an  attractive  influence  on  generations 
of  human  hearts.  He  was  not  a  Boniface,  not  an  Anskar, 
not  a  Xavier,  not  a  Martyn.  His  monastic  training,  carried 
on  probably  until  he  was  past  middle  life,  had  tended  to 
stifien  his  mind  and  narrow  his  range  of  thought ;  something 
of  smallness,  something  of  self -consciousness,  some  want  of 
consideration  for  unfamiliar  points  of  view  and  different 
forms  of  experience,  may  be  discerned  in  him  without  injus- 
tice, and  thus  explained  without  any  ungenerous  forgetfulness 
of  the  better  side  of  the  monastic  character.  Whatever  were 
his  shortcomings,  Augustine  of  Canterbury  was  a  good  man, 
a  devout  and  laborious  Christian  worker,  who  could,  and 

*■  Bede,  ii.  4,  'nobiliter  jacta.* 

"  Council  of  Clovesho,  c.  17  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  368. 


Overtures  to  Irish  Church.  109 

did,  face  threatening  difficulties  and  accept  serious  risks  in  chap.  nr. 
loyalty  to  a  sacred  call ;  a  missionary  whose  daily  conduct 
was  a  recommendation  of  his  preaching,  who  could  impress 
and  convince  men  of  various  classes  in  a  Teutonic  people 
that  had  little  in  common  with  his  Italian  antecedents; 
who,  as  archbishop,  did  his  duty,  as  he  read  it,  with  all  his 
might,  if  not  without  mistakes  or  failures,  such  as  we  may 
be  tempted  to  judge  more  harshly  than  they  merit ;  who, 
acting  thus,  accomplished  more  than  appears  at  first  sight, 
in  that  he  originated  so  much  of  the  work  which  was  to 
make  England  Christian. 

*  Laurence    began    his    archiepiscopate   with    strenuous  Laurence 
efforts  to  extend  the  foundations  of  the  Church,  and  took  ,  /*^*^" 

'  Ltisliop. 

pains  to  carry  up  its   fabric  to  the   due  height,  by  the 
frequent  utterance  of  holy  exhortation,  and  the  continual 
example  of  pious  conduct.'     Such  is  Bede's  eulogy  ^.     It  Overtures 
was  part  of  Laurence's  plan  to  make  a  fresh  attempt  in  the  church, 
direction  of  co-operation  and  union  with  the  Celtic  bishops 
and  Churches.     He  had,  at  first,  some  hope  that  the  Irish 
might  be  more  amenable  than  the  Britons.     But  he  became 
in  some  way  aware  of  the  resolute  Celticism,  in  regard  to 
Paschal   observance,   of    the   great   Irish-born   abbot   and 
missionary   Columban,   who   had    now   for   about    fifteen  Col um ban. 
years  ^  been  presiding  over  three  monasteries  in  the  wild 
country  of  the  Vosges,  and  in  spite  of  the  exacting  severities 
of  a  rule  far  more  onerous  than  Benedict's  ^  had  exercised 
a  strong  moral  and  spiritual  fascination  over  many  earnest 
souls  that  recognized  in  him  a  true  zealot  for  Christian 


^  Bede,  ii.  4  :  see  above,  p.  56. 

"^  Columban  came  into  Gaul,  in  order  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  heathen 
tribes  on  the  continent,  about  590.  He  settled  at  first  among  the  pine- 
forests  of  Burgundy  ;  disciples  gathered  round  him ;  he  founded  four 
monasteries  in  succession,  at  Anegray,  Luxeuil,  Fontenay,  and  (after  his 
removal  into  Italy)  at  Bobbio.  See  Lanigan,  ii.  261  ;  Milman,  Lat.  Chr. 
ii.  285  ;  Maclear,  Apostles  of  Med.  Eur.  p.  58  ;  King,  Ch.  Irel.  i.  249 ; 
Hodgkin,  Italy  and  her  Invaders,  vi.  1 10  ff.  He  died  in  615.  For  his 
writings,  see  Migne,  Patrol.  Lat.  Ixxx.  201  ff. 

'^  See  the  Rule  (in  Galland.  p  324},  c.  10.  The  elaborate  rules  of  pen- 
ance embodied  in  *  Penitentials '  originated  in  '  the  overstrained  and  indis- 
creet zeal  of  Cummian  and  Columbanus ;'  Haddan's  Remains,  p.  267  ;  see 
ib.  278,  and  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  i.  605,  and  Columban.  Reg.  Coen.  c.  10. 


no  Si.  Columban, 

CHAP.  III.  strictness,  whose  passion  it  was,  as  the  historian  of  French 
civilization  expresses  it,  to  *  cast  the  Divine  fire  abroad  on 
every  side,  without  troubling  himself  about  the  conflagra- 
tion ^.'  With  all  his  intense  Christian  devotion  ^,  the  Irish- 
man's perfervidum  ingeniuni  made  itself  apparent  in  his 
conduct.  He  had  denounced  the  Gallican  Easter  cycle, 
that  of  Victorius,  as  ridiculous  in  the  eyes  of  scholarly 
Irishmen^,  and  had  upheld  the  reckoning  which  included 
'  the  fourteenth  of  the  moon '  among  the  days  on  which 
Easter  Sunday  could  be  kept  *.  This  he  did  in  a  letter  to 
Pope  Gregory ;  and  about  the  time  when  Mellitus  and  his 
companions  were  passing  through  Gaul,  he  excused  himself 
from  attending  a  Gallic  synod  by  a  letter^  in  which  he 
claimed  the  authority  of  all  the  Western  Churches  for  not 
extending  the  Paschal  limits  beyond  the  twentieth  of  the 
moon,  and  upheld  the  cycle  of  eighty-four  years  as  repre- 
senting the  mind  of  venerated  writers,  and  contrasting 
with  the  '  doubtful  and  indefinite  language  of  Victorius  ^ ; ' 
while  at  the  same  time  he  was  content  to  deprecate 
intolerance,  to  ask  '  leave  to  dwell  quietly  m  these  woods 

^  Guizot,  Civil,  in  Fr.,  lect.  i6. 

^  See  his  tenth  '  Instruction '  and  second  *  Carmen.' 
^  Columb.  Ep.  I.  He  says  that  Victorius  transgressed  the  rule  that 
Easter  could  not  precede  the  equinox,  and  that  by  admitting  the  twenty- 
first  moon  within  the  limits,  a  Pascha  tenehrosum  was  introduced,  because 
that  moon  rises  after  midnight.  He  opposes  to  Victorius  the  authority 
of  '  Anatolius '  and  Jerome  (but  cf.  above,  p.  89 ;  Jerome  referred  to  the 
genuine  work  of  Anatolius).  Compare  Greg.  Turon.,  H.  Fr.  x.  23  :  '  In 
cyclo  Victor  luna  decima-quinta  Pascha  scripsit  fieri ;  sed  ne  Christiani,  ut 
Judaei,  sub  hac  luna  haec  solemnia  celebrarent,  addidit,  Latini  autem  luna 
vigesima-secunda/  &c.  There  is  a  strong  vein  of  pedantry  in  Columban, 
together  with  a  curious  ignorance  on  some  important  points  to  which 
he  refers :  but  he  was  a  genuine  classical  scholar,  and  the  library 
at  Bobbio  was  '  for  many  centuries  probably  the  richest  in  Italy ' 
(Hodgkin). 

*  He  says  that  the  plea  for  excluding  the  fourteenth,  'cum  Judaeis 
Pascha  facere  non  debemus,'  was  '  once  urged  by  Bishop  Victor,  but  no 
one  of  the  Easterns  (!)  suum  recepit  commentum.'  We  must,  he  insists, 
keep  Easter  from  the  fourteenth  to  the  twentieth  inclusive,  not  from  the 
fifteenth  to  the  twenty-first.     See  above,  p.  89. 

*  Columb.  Ep.  2. 

*  *  Victorium  nuper  dubie  scribentem,  et  ubi  necesse  erat,  nihil  definien- 
tem  .  .  .  who  wrote  under  Hilarus,  103  years  after  the  times  of  .  .  .  Pope 
Damasus.'     His  chronology  is  inaccurate.     See  too  Ep.  5.  9. 


His  Celtic  tenacity,  iii 

beside  the  bones  of  his  seventeen  departed  brethren,'  and  chap.  m. 
to  '  pray  that  Gaul  might  find  room  for  all/  of  whatever 
race,  who  were  on  their  road  to  '  the  heavenly  kingdom  ^.' 
But  it  was  obvious  that  Columban  would  not  depart  in 
any  particular  from  the  Irish  usages  on  this  point. 
Laurence  may  have  learned  from  some  Gallic  bishops,  or 
from  a  personal  visit  to  the  abbot  of  Luxeuil,  how  strong 
was  his  resolve  against  any  conformity  to  their  practice : 
and  the  tenacity  of  the  Irish  Churchmen's  adherence  to 
Celtic  rules  was  painfully  brought  home  to  the  archbishop 
when  an  Irish  bishop,  named  Dagan^,  having  come  to 
Britain  '^  for  the  purpose,  as  we  may  suppose,  of  conferring 
with  the  three  bishops  *,  was  apparently  so  much  irritated 
by  what  passed  in  the  discussion  that  he  flatly  refused  to 
eat  with  them,  or  even  to  eat  in  the  same  place  in  which 
they  were  taking  their  meal.  Laurence  wrote,  in  his  own 
name  and  in  those  of  his  two  suffragans,  to  their  'most 
dear  lords  and  brothers,  the  bishops  and  abbots  throughout 
all  Scotia,'  i.  e.  Ireland.  Only  part  of  the  letter  is  given  by 
Bede ;  but  he  tells  us  that  in  the  rest  Laurence  entreated 
them  to  be  at  one  in  '  Catholic  observance '  with  the  Church 
throughout  the  world.  Another  letter  to  the  like  effect 
was  sent  to  the  British  bishops  ^,  evidently  in  order  that 
Laurence  might  discharge  his  conscience,  and  be  able  to 
feel  that  he  had  done  all  he  could  to  promote  unity.  '  How 
much  good  he  got  from  it,'  says  Bede  with  something  of 
condensed  bitterness,  '  even  our  present  times  can  show,' — 
for  he  well  knew  how,  in  the  days  of  his  own  elder  con- 

*  *Ut  mihi  liceat  ...  in  his  silvis  silere  et  vivere  juxta  ossa  ...  as  up 
to  this  time  we  have  been  free  to  live  among  you  twelve  years.  .  .  Capiat 
nos  simul,  oro,  Gallia  quos  capiet  regnum  coelorum,  si  boni  simus  meriti,' 
&c.     See  Milman,  ii.  288 ;  Maclear,  p.  64  ;  King,  i.  294. 

2  Probably  the  bishop  of  Inverdaoile  (co.  Wexford^  of  that  name. 

^  Bede,  ii.  4.  *  Ad  nos  veniens '  might  imply  a  visit  to  Canterbury, 
although  the  words  '  in  eodem  hospitio  quo  vescebamur  *  have  been  under- 
stood otherwise.     See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  59. 

*  See  Lanigan,  ii.  367.  He  adds  that  on  this  supposition,  Dagan  could 
not  have  intended  all  along  '■  to  keep  up  no  sort  of  communion  with  them.* 
He  also  quotes  the  appellation  praeplacidum,  given  to  this  prelate,  who  was 
consecrated  about  600,  and  died  in  640. 

*  Bede,  ii.  4 :  *  Misit  idem  Laurentius  .  .  .  etiam  Brettonum  sacer- 
dotibus.* 


112         Second  address  to  Britons  fails. 

HAP.  III.  temporary,  Aldhelm  bishop  of  Sherborne  the  British  priests 
beyond  the  Severn  used  to  cleanse  elaborately  the  plates  or 
cups  from  which  Saxons  had  fed,  after  throwing  the 
remnants  of  their  food  to  dogs  and  swine  ^  ;  how,  at  the 
time  at  which  his  History  was  written,  the  Britons 
'regarded  the  Christianity  of  the  English  as  a  thing  of 
nought  -.'  In  effect,  the  Southern  Irish  gave  up  their 
Paschal  reckonings  in  deference  to  Papal  exhortations,  to 
the  opinion  of  some  of  their  own  leading  men,  e.  g. 
St.  Cummian,  and  to  evidence  obtained  as  to  the  pre- 
valence of  the  '  Catholic  Easter,'  not  only  at  Rome,  but 
in  other  leading  Churches, —about  A.  D.  634  ^ :  the  latter 
part  of  640,  in  the  north  of  Ireland,  five  bishops  and  other 
ecclesiastics  consulted  the  Roman  see  on  the  subject,  and 
received  from  the  Pope  elect,  John  IV,  and  other  Roman 
dignitaries  a  letter  implying  that  the  Irish  practice  was  in 
effect  Quartodeciman  * :  but  the  majority,  at  least,  of  the 
Northern  Irish  paid  more  regard  to  the  authority  of  the 
Columban  monastery  of  Hy  than  to  that  of  Rome  itself, 
and  retained  their  own  '  Pasch '  until  704,  while  Hy  stood 
out  until  716^.  The  Strathclyde  clergy  yielded  about  the 
same  time  as  the  North  Irish ;  the  North  Welsh,  under  the 
influence  of  Elbod  bishop  of  Bangor,  in  755  or  768;  the 
South  Welsh,  under  strong  pressure,  in  777  ^.  It  was  then, 
and  not  until  then,  that  the  English  Church,  which  had 
been  founded  and  organized  without  the  aid  of  the  British, 
absorbed  the  latter  into  its  own  body.  It  was  thus,  and 
only  thus,  that  it  acquired  continuity  with  the  Church 
which  had  been  represented   at  Aries  and   at  Ariminum, 

*  Aldhelm,  Ep.  i.     See  p.  99. 
^  Bade,  ii.  20. 

^  Lanigau,  ii.  389  flf.  King  dates  the  Synod  of  the  Field  of  Lane  in  630, 
and  distinguishes  it  from  the  Synod  of  the  White  Field,  held  (after  the 
return  of  the  Irish  delegates  from  Kome)  in  633  'or  634  ;  Ch.  Irel.  i.  171. 
Another  view  identifies  the  two  Synods  :  but  Lanigan  observes  that 
Maghlene  and  '  Whitefield '  are  in  different  counties.  He  gives  the 
substance  of  Cummian's  letter  in  defence  of  his  adoption  of  tlie  Roman 
Easter,  so  King,  i.  154.     See  the  original  in  Uslier's  'Sylloge,'  Ep.  11. 

*  Bede,  iii.  19.     Cf.  Lanigan,  ii.  4091?. 

'  Bede,  v.  22;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  114. 
'  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  6  ;  i.  203. 


Dedication  of  SS,  Peter  and  PauVs,     113 

which  could  look  back  to  Alban  as  its  protomartyr,  and  to  ^jhap.  m. 
German  as  its  deliverer  from  the  heresy  invented  by  one 
of  its  own  sons. 

The  ecclesiastical  society  at  Canterbury  sustained  a  loss 
at  the  close  of  607,  when  the  abbot  Peter,  sent  by  Ethel- 
bert  as  an  envoy  to  Gaul,  was  drowned  in  the  bay  of  Amble- 
teuse;   his  body  was  recovered,  and  buried  in  St.  Mary's 
church  at  Boulogne  \     John,  one  of  '  the  Forty,'  succeeded 
him :   and  in  the  same  year,  608,  bishop  Mellitus  went  to  Mellitus  at 
Rome  to  consult  Pope  Boniface  IV  on  the  affairs  of  the    ^^^ 
English  mission,  and  was  honourably  received  in  a  Roman 
synod  held  on  Feb.  27,  610,  the  decrees  of  which  he  sub- 
scribed 2.     The  Pope  sent  back  with  him  a  letter  to  Ethel- 
bert,  and  others  to  Laurence  and  his  clergy  ^ :  and  after  his 
return  he  was  probably  present  at  the  long-delayed  dedica-  Dedication 
tion  of  the  monastery  church  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul,  outside  Pefe^and 
the   east  wall   of   Canterbury.     Laurence   performed   the  Paul's, 
ceremony,  and  then  transferred  the  remains  of  Augustine, 
with  all  honour,  to  a  grave  in  the  northern  *  porch '  of  the 
church*.     The  monastery,  as  it  grew  in  resources,  became 
a  conspicuous  specimen  of  monastic  exemption  from  dio- 
cesan rule ;  it  was  called  '  the  Roman  Chapel  in  England,' 
as  being  immediately  subject  to  the  Pope^.    Its  community 

*  Bede,  i.  33.     He  is  still  commemorated  yearly  at  Ambleteuse. 

"^  '  Confirmaret,'  <  assent  to ;'  Bede,  ii.  4 ;  cp.  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  459. 
The  decree  ascribed  to  this  synod,  on  the  right  of  monks  to  ofl&ciate  as 
priests,  is  an  absurd  forgery. 

3  Bede,  1.  c. :  'Una  cum  epistolis,'  &c.  But  the  letter  beginning  *Dum 
Christianitatis  vestrae,'  Malmesb.  G.  P.  i.  30,  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  65, 
professing  to  grant  the  king's  request  that  a  regular  community  of  monks 
might  be  established  in  the  cathedral  monastery,  is  clearly  an  '  Augus- 
tinian'  invention,  meant  to  establish  the  seniority  of  that  community 
over  the  former.  Cf.  Elmham,  p.  85.  Elmham  says  that  Mellitus  . 
brought  home  this  letter  after  a  second  journey  in  615  ;  p.  134.  A  letter 
or  bull  ascribed  to  Boniface,  in  Elmham,  p.  129,  is  spurious.  See  Hard- 
vrick's  Introduction  to  Elmham,  p.  xxviii. 

*  Bede,  ii.  3  ;  *Mox  vero,'  &c.  'Porticus'  occurs  in  Bede,  iii.  19,  v.  20. 
It  means  an  adjunct  to  a  church,  whether  vestibule,  apse,  or  side-chapel. 

5  <Life  of  St.  Augustine,'  p.  133.  See  Elmham,  pp.  386,  392,  404 
(Eugenius  III  said  that  the  monastery  was  'beati  Petri  juris,'  &c.).  An 
earlier  Pope,  Agatho,  forbade  any  <  sacerdos '  (bishop)  to  exercise  authority 
in  the  monastery,  '■  praeter  sedem  apostolicam,'  it  being  specially  under 
the  jurisdiction  of  Rome  ;  p.  247.    Guizot  says  of  the  Prankish  monasteries 

t  I 


114 


Death  of  Ethelbert. 


CHAP.  m. 


Death  of 
Ethelbert. 


Eadbald 
refuses 
Chris- 
tianity. 


carried  on  a  tradition  of  jealous  independence  as  regards 
the  archbishop,  and  a  sort  of  standing  feud  with  their 
neighbours  of  the  metropolitan  cathedral,  and  did  not 
shrink  from  documentary  frauds  in  support  of  their  pro- 
gramme ^. 

King  Ethelbert,  when  he  witnessed  the  removal  of 
Bertha's  corpse  as  well  as  Augustine's,  to  the  minster 
newly  dedicated,  may  well  have  felt  that  his  life's  work 
was  done.  Yet  he  lived  three  years  longer,  probably 
saddened  in  his  last  days  by  apprehensions  as  to  the 
fortunes  of  the  Church  under  his  son  Eadbald,  who,  accord- 
ing to  the  Chronicle,  had  been  baptized,  but,  according  to 
the  higher  authority  of  Bede,  '  had  refused  to  receive  the 
faith  of  Christ  ^ : ' — if  this  phrase  is  to  be  taken  literally, 
it  implies  that  Eadbald  had  resisted  the  exhortations  of 
his  father's  religious  guides.  Ethelbert's  reign  of  fifty-six 
years  came  to  a  close  on  the  24th  of  February,  in  616 :  but 
in  assigning  to  him  twenty-one  years  of  Christian  life,  the 
historian  ^  is  inconsistent  with  his  own  date  of  597  for  the 
arrival  of  Augustine.  Ethelbert  was  buried  in  St.  Martin's 
'  porch,'  within  the  church  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul  *.  '  Ead- 
bald, on  assuming  the  government,  did  much  harm  to  the 
Church,  which  was  still  in  its  tender  growth.'  He  would 
have  none  of  the  new  lore:  he  would  cleave  to  the  old 
worship :  and  he  followed  an  old  Teutonic  rule  ^  by  uniting 

that  Fulda  was  the  first  to  be  placed  under  the  direct  jurisdiction  of  Rome  : 
Civil,  in  Fr.  lect.  15. 

^  See  Hardwick's  remarks  in  Introduction  to  Elmham,  p.  viii.  For  the 
story  of  the  monk  of  St.  Medard,  who  on  his  death-bed  confessed  that  he 
had  forged  bulls  of  exemption  in  favour  of  St.  Augustine's  and  other 
monasteries,  see  Palgrave,  Eng.  Comm.  p.  ccxi.  See  the  spurious  deeds  in 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  54-59,  67-70 ;  and  cp.  Freeman,  iv.  408. 

2  See  Elmham,  p.  87,  for  a  sample  of  animosity  on  the  side  of  the 
cathedral  monks  ;  and  cf.  ib.  317  for  archbishop  Cuthbert's  successful 
scheme  for  ensuring  his  own  burial  in  the  cathedral.  After  Bregwin's 
similar  burial  the  Augustinians  were  on  the  point  of  having  recourse  to 
arms ;  ib.  328. 

^  Bede,  ii.  5.     Elmham  corrects  this  to  *  nineteen/ 

*  In  the  south  part  of  the  church,  Elmham,  p.  137,  where  Bertha  and 
Liudhard  were  buried.  Against  the  story  of  his  having  been  buried  at 
Reculver,  see  Stanley,  Mem.  Cant.  p.  46. 

^  See  above,  p.  66,  on  this  custom,  and  Robertson's  Hist.  Essays,  p.  Ixvii. 
The  Council  of  Agde,  in  506,  had  included  those  who  married  their  step- 


Eadbald  rejects  the  Faith,  115 

himself  to  his  father's  widow,  the  successor  of  Bertha.  c«a^-  "i- 
We  can  well  understand  how,  as  Bede  tells  us,  those  who 
under  Ethelbert  had  acquiesced,  without  conviction,  in  the 
creed  which  he  adopted, — had  '  accepted  the  laws  of  faith 
and  chastity^  either  for  fear  or  for  the  sake  of  favour' 
(although  indeed  Ethelbert  had  never  imposed  Christianity 
on  any  of  his  subjects),  took  occasion  to  resume  their 
heathenism  under  a  king  who,  as  they  would  express  it, 
was  not  the  dupe  of  the  shavelings  from  Rome.  '  Eadbald 
was  troubled  with  fits  of  madness,  and  by  the  attacks  of 
an  unclean  spirit : '  such  is  Bede's  statement,  and  in  these 
moods,  as  they  probably  were,  of  wild  excitement  the 
Christian  subjects  of  Eadbald  would  deem  that  they  beheld 
a  corrective  visitation.  But  Eadbald  appeared  obstinate ; 
and  to  add  to  the  anxieties  of  Laurence,  Mellitus  was  just 
now  exposed  to  an  equally  trying  reverse  of  his  former 
prosperity.  Sabert  was  just  dead :  the  East-Saxon  realm 
was  left  to  his  three  sons,  named  Sseward,  Sexred,  and 
Sigebert.  Although  'in  their  father's  lifetime  they  had 
seemed  to  give  up  a  little  of  their  idolatry^,'  they  now 
openly  resumed  it.  One  day  they  came  into  St.  Paul's 
church,  while  the  bishop  was  administering  the  Holy  Com- 
munion ^.  '  Why  do  you  not,'  they  rudely  asked  him,  '  give 
us  also  a  share  in  the  white  bread ^,  which  you  used  to  give 

mothers  among  the  incestuous  who  were  never  to  be  absolved,  *  nisi  cum 
adulterium  separatione  sanaverint  ; '  c.  6i ;  Mansi,  viii.  335. 

^  Compare  St.  Boniface's  bitter  complaints  about  those  whom  he  had 
taken  for  sheep  and  who  proved  to  be  goats,  Ep.  22  ;  and  Ep.  27,  on  *  false 
Christians.' 

2  '■  Aliquantulum  intermisisse  ; '  Bede,  ii.  5. 

^  Bede  says,  '■  celebratis  missarum  sollemniis,'  meaning,  the  mass  which 
was  being  celebrated,  and  which  was  then  considered  to  be  in  one  sense 
finished  by  the  celebrant's  communion.  '  Censebantur  sollemnia  missarum 
consummata  priusquam  communio,  saltem  laicis,  distribueretur ; '  Ruinart, 
Praef.  ad  Greg.  Turon.  s.  46.  A  single  celebration  was  often  called 
'missae'  in  recollection  of  the  ancient  dismissal,  first  of  catechumens, 
finally  of  '  fideles.'  Cp.  first  Council  of  Orleans,  c.  26  (Mansi,  viii.  355), 
and  Caesarius  in  App.  to  Aug.  Serm.,  no.  281,  that  the  *  missae  solennitas' 
was  'completed'  when  the  bishop  gave  his  benediction  (see  above,  p.  64). 
Mellitus  might  have  done  this  before  the  princes  came  in.  See  also 
Cyprian  de  Lapsis,  25. 

*  Hook,  i.  97,  'slips  in'  (see  Haddan's  Remains,  p.  301)  a  mention  of 
*  wine.'     Of  course,  *  both  kinds '  were  administered  ;  but  *  something  in 

I  2 


ji6  Mellitus  expelled  from  London. 

to  our  father  Saba\  and  which  you  still  continue  to  give  to 
the  people  in  the  church  % '  '  If/  answered  Mellitus,  with 
calm  dignity, '  you  are  willing  to  be  washed  in  that  font  of 
salvation  ^  in  which  your  father  was  washed,  then  you  may 
also  partake  of  the  holy  bread  of  which  he  used  to  par- 
take; but  if  you  despise  the  laver  of  life,  you  cannot 
possibly  receive  the  bread  of  life.'  They  answered,  'We 
will  not  go  into  that  font,  for  we  know  not  what  need  we 
have  of  it :  but  for  all  that,  we  choose  to  eat  of  that  bread.' 
It  was  sheer  barbaric  curiosity,  combined  with  the  self-will 
of  young  princes  suddenly  left  to  their  own  guidance. 
They  could  not  brook  any  curb  on  their  caprices:  and 
when  Mellitus  '  repeatedly  and  earnestly '  set  before  them 
the  necessity  of  baptism  as  a  pre-requisite  for  '  communion 
in  the  most  holy  oblation  ^,'  they  cut  him  short  in  senseless 
wrath,  saying,  '  If  you  will  not  give  us  our  way  in  so  small 
a  matter,  you  shall  not  remain  in  our  province : '  and  '  they 
commanded  him,  and  all  who  belonged  to  him,  to  leave 
their  kingdom.'  Thus  it  was  that  for  adhering  to  the 
principle  that  religious  privileges  implied  religious  obliga- 
tions, and  were  not  to  be  had  without  them, — for  refusing 
to  degrade  his  religion  by  imparting  its  holiest  treasures  to 
outsiders  who  would  not  qualify  themselves  for  such  recep- 
tion by  the  one  indispensable  initiatory  rite, — Mellitus  lost 
his  church  and  bishopric,  and  had  perforce  to  see  his  work 

the  bread  .  .  .  attracted  the  eye  of  the  heathen  princes.'  And  they  would 
naturally  look  at  Mellitus,  not  at  his  deacon  who  would  be  administering 
the  chalice. 

^  A  familiar  abbreviation  of  Sabert  (itself  a  familiar  'short'  name), 
as  '  Ceol '  for  '  Ceolwulf '  the  father  of  Kynegils,  and  for  Ceolric,  king  of 
the  Hwiccas.  Comp.  Elmham,  p.  338  :  '  It  is  a  Saxon  fashion  nomina 
transformare  .  .  .  syncopando,  ut  pro  Thoma  Tomme  .  .  .  pro  Johanne  .  .  . 
Jacke.' 

^  Comp.  Bede,  ii.  14,  'lavacrum  sanctae  regenerationis ; '  iii.  21,  'fidei 
fonte;'  iii.  23,  '  lavacri  salutaris  ;'  iv.  16,  v.  19,  ''fonte  Salvatoris;'  v.  6, 
'  salutari  fonte  .  .  .  vitali  unda.' 

2  Comp.  Bede,  iii.  2,  '  victimam  sacrae  oblationis  ; '  iv.  14,  '  sacrificiis 
caelestibus  .  .  .  de  sacrificio  Dominicae  oblationis  particulam  ; '  iv.  22, 
'  oblationem  hostiae  salutaris  .  .  .  victimas  sacrae  oblationis  ; '  iv.  28,  v. 
10,  '  sacrificium  victimae  salutaris.'  Compare  Gildas,  28,  '  sacrificii 
caelestis  sedem,'  and  67,  *  manus  .  .  .  sacrosanctis  Christi  sacrificiis  exten- 
suri ; '  and  Adamn.  iii.  17,  'sacram  oblationem  consecrantis.' 


Story  of  Laurence's  dream,  117 

abruptly  arrested :  and   from   that  day,  for  nearly  forty  chap.  m. 
years,  London  and  Essex  were  lost  to  Christianity. 

The  expelled  bishop  hastened  to  Canterbury,  whither 
Laurence  had  summoned  Justus  from  Rochester;  and  the 
three  prelates  held  a  sorrowful  consultation,  which  tended 
to  increase  their  despondency  as  it  were  by  infection,  and 
ended  in  the  resolution  to  abandon  the  mission.  It  was  an 
access  of  such  faint-heartedness  as  was  only  too  natural, 
when  all  around  seemed  hopelessly  dark :  but  its  character 
was  probably  concealed  from  themselves  by  the  use  of 
religious  phraseology.  '  Better,'  they  said,  '  return  to  Italy, 
and  there  serve  God  in  freedom,  than  stay  here  where  no 
good  is  to  be  done,  among  barbarians  who  have  revolted 
from  the  faith.'  Accordingly,  Mellitus  and  Justus  crossed 
the  Channel,  and  took  up  their  abode  in  Gaul,  intending  to 
await  events.  Laurence  was  to  follow :  on  the  night  before 
his  intended  departure,  he  caused  his  bed  to  be  prepared 
within  the  church  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul.  After  praying 
long,  with  tears,  for  his  people,  he  lay  down,  and  slept. 
Bede  then  reports  what  he  had  received  from  his  inform- 
ants^, that  St.  Peter  appeared  to  Laurence,  scourged  him, 
and  demanded  'why  he  was  forsaking  the  flock  whom 
he  himself  had  entrusted  to  his  care'  (a  phrase  which 
obviously  refers  to  the  origination  of  the  mission  from  a 
successor  of  St.  Peter) ;  and  that  this  rebuke  was  enforced 
by  a  reference  to  the  apostle's  own  endurance  of  suffering 
and  even  martyrdom  '  for  the  little  ones  of  Christ.'  Next 
morning  Laurence  hastened  to  Eadbald,  'drew  aside  his 
garment,'  and  showed  the  actual  marks  of  nocturnal  casti- 
gation.  '  Who  has  dared,'  asked  the  king,  '  to  inflict  such 
blows  on  a  man  of  your  rank  1 '  Laurence  told  what  had 
happened :  Eadbald  was  deeply  awed,  cast  away  his  idols, 
'renounced  his  unlawful  marriage,  embraced  the  faith  of 
Christ,  and  after  receiving  baptism,  took  pains  to  promote 
in  all  things,  to  the  utmost  of  his  power,  the  interests  of 

^  The  story  is  referred  to  by  Alcuin  in  his  letter  of  remonstrance  to  arch- 
bishop Ethelheard  ;  see  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  519 ;  and  in  Laurence's 
epitaph,  Elmham,  p.  149, — 

*  Pro  populo  Christi  scapulas  dorsumque  dedisti.* 


ii8  Conversion  of  Eadbald. 

the  Church.'  It  has  been  suggested  that  this  story  of  the 
appearance  of  St.  Peter  and  the  scourging  is  probably  the 
legendary  exaggeration  of  a  dream,  in  which  Laurence 
imagined  himself  to  receive  such  discipline  from  his 
heavenly  visitor  ^  and  after  which  in  compunction  he 
perhaps  inflicted  it  on  himself  - ;  that  he  may  have  suc- 
ceeded in  producing  a  salutarj^  effect  on  Eadbald  by  the 
mere  recital  of  his  dream, — possibly  also  by  the  visible 
tokens  of  his  penance ;  and  that  there  is  therefore  no 
necessity  for  imputing  to  him  a  fraud,  such  as,  doubtless, 
a  lax  casuistry  has  often  miscalled  '  pious,'  in  f orgetf ulness 
of  the  condemnation  of  'lying  for  God.'  Yet  writers  so 
equitable  as  Haddan  and  Hardwick  have  found  it  diJfficult 
to  dispense  with  this  unfavourable  supposition^.  As  it 
stands,  the  story  belongs  to  a  class  of  which  the  first 
specimen  is  given  by  a  writer  of  the  third  century,  to  the 
effect  that  a  certain  Natalius,  who  having  been  a  confessor 
had  afterwards  become  a  '  bishop '  among  heretics,  was 
scourged  all  night  long  by  angels,  and  showed  his  bruises 
next  day  to  the  orthodox  Roman  bishop  and  church*. 
There  is,  at  any  rate,  no  doubt  that  an  impression  was 
made  on  Eadbald,  which  produced  a  conversion  of  the 
most  genuine  and  practical  kind,  such  as  Bede  has  de- 
scribed in  words  already  quoted,  and  in  a  sentence  a  little 
further  on:  'He  gave  himself  up  in  good  earnest  to  the 
Divine  precepts^.'     He  sent  into  Gaul  to  summon  home 

*  Hook,  i.  89  ;  Green,  Making  of  Engl.  p.  247. 

2  This  suggestion  is  Churton's ;  Early  Engl.  Church,  pp.  53,  54. 

'  Haddan,  Remains,  p.  309,  Hardwick,  Ch.  H.  Mid.  Ages,  p.  9.  Cf. 
Church,  Beginning  of  M.  Ages,  p.  85,  '  sometimes  evidently  fraudulent 
miracles  played  their  part,'  &c. 

*  The  author  of  the  Little  Labyrinth  (Caius  ?)  in  Euseb.  v.  28.  Com- 
pare Tertullian  de  Idololatria,  15,  '  Scio  fratrem  per  visionem  .  .  .  castiga- 
tum,'  &c.  ;  and  Jerome's  strange  story  of  his  having  been  rapt  '  in  spirit  * 
before  the  Divine  Judge  (while  his  body  seemed  stiffened  in  death  from 
the  effects  of  fever),  and  scourged  for  his  love  of  heathen  literature. 
'  Liventes  fateor  me  habuisse  scapulas  ; '  Ep.  22.  30.  And  the  story  in 
Adamn.  Vit.  S.  Columb.  iii.  5,  that  *  quadam  nocte  in  ecstasi  mentis' 
Columba  was  *  struck  with  a  whip '  by  an  angel,  and  retained  the  mark 
through  life. 

'  Bede,  ii.  6.  On  'mancipare,'  cf.  iv.  25.  He  built  a  church  of  St. 
Mary  to  the  east  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul's,  beyond  the  cemetery  of  the 
monks.    See  Elmham,  p.  144. 


Redwald's  compromise.  119 

the  two  fugitive  bishops ;  they  however,  somewhat  unac-  chap.  m. 
countably,  delayed  their  return  for  about  a  year.  Eadbald 
could  uphold  Justus,  as  his  father  had  done,  at  Rochester : 
but  he  was  not,  like  his  father,  supreme  over  Essex.  The 
young  kings  who  had  expelled  Mellitus  were  soon  after- 
wards ^  slain  in  battle  by  the  West- Saxons :  and  whatever 
Sigebert  the  Little,  their  successor-,  may  have  done  or 
wished  to  do  in  the  matter,  we  are  expressly  told  that '  the 
Londoners  would  not  receive  Mellitus  back  as  their  bishop, 
preferring  to  be  under  their  own  idolatrous  high  priests,' — 
that  '  the  common  people,  after  having  been  stirred  up  to 
the  crime'  of  apostasy,  'could  not  be  corrected  and  re- 
claimed to  the  faith,' — and  that  'Eadbald  had  not  power 
enough  to  restore  the  prelate  to  his  church  in  the  teeth  of 
heathens  saying  him  nay^.' 

The  year  after  Eadbald's  accession — the  year  of  this 
obstinate  rejection  of  the  faith  by  the  greatest  of  English 
cities — was  marked  by  an  event  which,  in  its  ultimate 
results,  was  a  momentous  gain  to  English  Christianity. 
The  East-Anglians  of  Norfolk  and  Suffolk  were  now  ruled  Redwald 
by  a  king  named  Redwald,  grandson  of  that  UfFa  from  Anglia. 
whom  the  dynasty  took  the  name  of  Uffingas.  He  is 
reckoned  as  fourth  of  the  '  Bretwaldas  ^!  He  had  visited 
Kent  in  Ethelbert's  time,  and  had  even  accepted  baptism ; 
but  on  his  return  home,  his  Pagan  wife  '  and  certain  per- 
verse teachers,'  appealing  to  his  lingering  superstitions  or 
to  his  political  self-interest,  drew  him  into  a  compromise 
which  Bede  likens  to  the  mixed  worship  of  the  old  Samari- 
tans, who  '  feared  the  Lord  and  served  their  own  gods  ^.' 
He  had  '  in  the  same  (heathen)  fane  an  altar  for  Christ's 
sacrifice,'  and  a  smaller  one  for  the  worship  of  idols  ^ : — it 

^  Bede,  ii.  5  :  *  Sed  non  multo  tempore,'  &c. 

^  Bede,  iii.  22.     He  was  son  of  Saeward,  and  had  a  long  reign. 

'  Bede,  ii.  6:  'MellitumveroLundoniensesepiscopumrecipere  noluerunt 
.  .  .  Non  enim  tanta  erat  ei,  quanta  patri  ipsius,  regni  potestas,'  &c.  And 
ib.  ii.  5,  fin. :  *Nec,  licet  auctoribus  perditis  .  .  .'  &e. 

*  He  ^  gave  this  ascendency  to  the  East-Saxons '  when  Ethelbert's  ener- 
gies had  begun  to  fail ;  Bede,  ii.  5. 

*  2  Kings  xvii.  33.  His  wife,  though  unhappily  adverse  to  Christianity, 
was  a  high-minded  woman  ;  see  below. 

''  '  In  eodem  fano  et  altare  ad  sacrificium  Christi,  et  arulam  ad  victimas 


I20 


Edwin  in  exile. 


CHAP.  III.  was  a  combination  essentially  resembling  the  attempt  of 
many  in  that  age  to  keep  terms  with  both  religions  by 
attending  indiscriminately  the  churches  and  the  old  heathen 
temples  \  or  the  subsequent  expedient  of  a  Norwegian  king 
who,  while  signing  the  cross  over  his  cup,  told  his  people 
that  it  meant  'the  hammer  of  Thor^.'  Redwald  had  a  con- 
sciousness of  the  claims  of  Christianity,  but  he  durst  not 
admit  them  without  reserve,  and  in  their  exclusive  abso- 
luteness ; — he  fancied  that  he  could  treat  his  baptismal 
creed  as  one  form  of  religion  with  which  older  forms 
might  be  associated  -^ :  or  perhaps  he  persuaded  himself 
that,  in  exceptional  circumstances,  the  baptized  king  of 
heathen  subjects  might  reasonably  accommodate  himself, 
to  a  certain  extent,  to  the  religious  prejudices  of  his 
people.  Be  this  as  it  may,  Redwald,  in  the  beginning  of 
617,  was  still  harbouring  at  his  court  an  exiled  Northum- 
brian prince,  whose  name  of  Edwin  ^  should  not  be  uttered 
by  any  Englishman  without  grateful  respect,  although  his 
early  life  gave  little  promise  of  such  a  career  as  in  fact 

Early  life  awaited  him.  A  son  of  the  Northumbrian  Ella  whose 
name  had  been  played  with  by  Gregory"  as  suggestive  of 

daemonioi-um.'  King  Aldwulf  of  East-Anglia,  when  a  boy,  saw  this  'fane.' 
Bede,  ii.  15.  Compare  Maclear,  Conv.  of  Slavs,  p.  136,  on  a  case  in 
Pomerania  of  a  pagan  altar  set  up  within  a  church. 

^  Gregory,  Ep.  ix.  11  :  see  too  ib.  viii.  18.  Compare  Willibald's  Vit.  S, 
Bonifacii,  c.  8,  that  some  of  the  Hessian  converts  would  not  receive 
Christian  teachers  '  integre,'  but  sacrificed  to  trees  or  fountains,  some 
'clanculo,'  some  openly  ^Migne,  Patr.  Lat.  Ixxxix.  619).  So  the  Magyars 
who  had  conformed  to  Christianity  often  kept  up  the  worship  of  their 
god  Isten  within  the  forests  or  beside  the  fountains.     See  above,  p.  80, 

^  Hacon,  son  of  Harold  Haarfager.  See  the  story  in  Maclear's  Conver- 
sion of  Northmen,  p.  57. 

^  Pearson  calls  this  '  the  first  authentic  mention  of  a  process  of  develop- 
ment which  purified  and  rationalized  Odinism  during  several  centuries,' 
and  '  irradiated  it  with  gleams  of  love  and  hopefulness  from  Christianity' 
(Hist.  Engl.  i.  127,  155),  as  the  bright  and  beloved  Baldr  was  invested 
with  some  attributes  of  '  the  White  Christ ' ;  see'  Kemble,  i.  367.  Cp. 
Maclear,  Apost.  of  Mediaev.  Eur.  p.  18,  '  Baldr  ..."  the  restorer  of 
peace,  the  maker-up  of  quarrels." ' 

*  If  antiquarian  precision  gains  by  adherence  to  such  forms  as  Eadwine, 
Eadward.  Alfred,  for  names  which  have  become  part  of  English  speech,  the 
sense  of  reality  loses.  It  is  not  a  question  in  which  historical  truth  is 
interested,  as  in  the  use  or  disuse  of  the  French  *  Charlemagne '  for  the 
great  German  king. 


His  mysterious  visitant,  121 

Alleluia,  Edwin,  as  a  child  ^,  had  been  despoiled  of  his  chap,  h 
royal  inheritance  by  Ethelric,  the  father  of  Ethelfrid — 
had  been  sheltered,  according  to  a  Welsh  tradition,  by 
king  Cadvan  of  North  Wales  ^ — had  certainly  at  some 
time  fled  into  Mercia^,  and  thence  into  the  more  remote 
East  Anglia.  Thither,  however,  Ethelfrid's  hate  pursued 
him :  Redwald  received  message  after  message,  offering 
*a  large  sum  of  money  for  the  slaughter  of  Edwin:'  at 
last,  threats  of  war  were  combined  with  the  promises,  and 
Redwald,  allured  or  alarmed,  gave  consent.  It  was  then, 
according  to  the  famous  and  impressive  story  "^j  that 
a  friend  of  Edwin  entered  the  exile's  bedchamber,  called 
him  out,  told  him  what  the  king  had  promised  to  do  with 
him,  and  offered  to  conduct  him,  that  very  night,  out  of  the 
province,  and  out  of  the  reach  of  Ethelfrid  or  Redwald  ^ 
Edwin  declined  the  offer,  not  thanklessly,  but,  according  to 
Bede's  representation,  partly  from  a  scruple  of  honour, 
partly  from  moody  hopelessness.  He  would  not  be  the 
first  to  break  friendship  with  Redwald,  who  as  yet  had 
never  wronged  him  ;  if  he  was  to  die,  let  his  death  come 
by  Redwald's  hand  rather  than  by  any  less  noble.  What 
new  refuge  could  he  find  after  nearly  thirty  years  of 
wandering?  His  friend  retired,  leaving  him  seated  on 
a  stone  outside  the  palace,  and  distracted  by  '  many  a  tide 
of  thought '  as  to  what  he  should  do,  or  whither  he  should 
go.  When  he  had  spent  a  long  time  in  silent  distress^ 
he  seemed  to  see,  in  the  dead  stillness  of  night,  a  man 
approaching  him  whose  face  and  garb  were  alike  strange, 

^  Edwin  was  born  in  585,  three  years  before  his  father's  death.  Then 
Ethelric,  the  Bernician,  seized  Deira,  and  Edwin's  troubles  began,  in  588. 

^  So  Lappenberg,  i.  145.  But  would  he  not,  in  that  case,  have  been  bred 
up  a  Christian  ?  See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  75.  The  Welsh  story  was 
that  Cadvan,  who  became  king  in  603,  *  hazarded  a  war  with  the  persecutor 
of  Edwin,  which  ended  in  the  battle  of  Chester;'  Lappenberg,  i.  145, 
Cadvan  was  described  in  his  epitaph  (found  in  Anglesey)  as  'wisest  and 
most  renowned  of  kings.'  He  was  fourth  in  descent  from  Maelgwyn,  and 
died  about  616  ;  Rhys,  p.  127. 

^  He  married  a  Mercian  princess,  who  died  before  625. 

*  See  it  exquisitely  told  by  Bede,  ii.  12,  '  Quod  ubi  fidissimus  quidam,* 
&c.  ;  and  the  rendering  in  Freeman's  Old-Engl.  Hist.  p.  52. 

^  '  Si  ergo  vis,  hac  ipsa  nocte,'  &c. 


122  Edwms  promises, 

c;hap.  III.  and  who,  after  greeting  him,  asked  why  he  was  sitting 
there,  alone  and  sorrowful,  while  every  one  else  was 
taking  repose.  '  What  matters  it  to  you,'  asked  Edwin 
impatiently,  recovering  from  a  momentary  dread,  '  whether 
I  pass  the  night  within  doors  or  here?'  'Do  not  think,' 
rejoined  the  stranger,  *  that  I  am  unaware  of  the  reason  of 
your  sleeplessness  and  anxiety.  I  know  who  you  are,  and 
what  you  are  now  afraid  of.  But  tell  me  what  you  would 
give  a;s  a  reward  to  any  one  who  could  deliver  you  from 
your  peril.'  '  I  would  give  all  I  could.'  '  What  if  he  could 
also  assure  you  that  you  should  crush  your  foes  and  become 
a  king,  and  a  mightier  king  than  your  forefathers,  or  even 
than  all  who  have  been  beforetime  kings  of  the  Angles  % ' 
Again  Edwin  promised  to  requite  such  service  as  it 
merited.  'But,'  said  the  stranger,  'what  if  he  whose 
predictions  should  have  been  thus  made  good  were  able 
to  give  you  better  counsel  for  your  life  and  safety  than 
any  of  your  kindred  ever  heard  of  ?  would  you  then  follow 
his  guidance  ? '  Edwin  promised  that  he  would  do  so  abso- 
lutely. The  stranger  laid  his  hand  on  Edwin's  head, 
saying,  'When  this  token  is  given  you,  remember  our 
conversation,  and  fulfil  your  promise;'  and  instantly,  as 
Bede  heard  the  story,  he  disappeared.  Edwin  was  still 
sitting  on  the  stone  seat,  gladdened  by  the  encouraging 
words,  but  much  perplexed  as  to  their  mysterious  speaker', 
when  his  friend  returned  with  a  glad  countenance.  '  Rise 
up,  and  go  to  rest  without  fear.  The  king  told  his  wife  of 
his  resolution  against  you,  and  she  told  him  that  it  was 
nowise  meet  for  a  great  king  to  sell  for  gold  a  good  friend 
in  distress,  or  rather  for  love  of  gain  to  ruin  that  which 
was  more  precious  than  all  ornaments,  his  honour.  This 
has  changed  his  mind  again.'  It  was  true :  Redwald  had 
determined  not  only  to  protect  Edwin,  but  to  anticipate 

Battle  of    the    threatened    attack   of    Ethelfrid.    '  He   gathered    all 

et  (.rd.     j^-g   forces,   marched   rapidly   northward,  and   giving   the 

*  Destroyer '  no  time  to  make  full  preparations,  met  him 

'  Bede  says  he  knew  him  to  be  a  spirit.  The  St.  Gallen  *  Life  of  Gregory ' 
says,  ^  Quidam  cum  cruce  Christi  coronatus,'  a  supposed  'apparition  of 
Paulinus ' ;  who,  in  fact,  may  have  been  visiting  Redwald. 


Edwin,  King  of  Northumbria.  123 

on  the  borders  of  Mercia,  on  the  east  bank  of  the  Idle,  chap.  m. 
probably  at  Idleton  near  Retford  ^  and,  as  we  infer  from 
a  calculation  of  Bede,  before  the  nth  of  April  in  617^. 
Here  Ethelfrid  was  defeated  and  slain:  a  popular  saying 
commemorated 

The  day  when  Idle  flood 

Ran  foul  with  Angle  blood ^; 

and  Edwin,  the  hunted  and  all  but  betrayed  fugitive,  Edwin, 
became  at  once  the  sovereign  of  the  whole  Northumbrian  ^orfhum- 
region,  uniting  his  hereditary  Deira  to  Bernicia.  'He  drove  ^"a. 
out  the  Ethelings,  sons  of  Ethelfrid*,'  says  the  Saxon 
Chronicle;  and  we  must  mark  three  names, — Eanfrid, 
Oswald,  and  Oswy, — one  destined  to  a  brief  and  shameful 
elevation,  the  two  others  to  a  high  rank  among  Old- English 
monarchs,  and  one  of  these  to  the  purest  form  of  royal 
glory — but  all  three  at  present  cast  aside  into  the  gloom 
of  a  common  ruin.  To  all  appearance,  Edwin  was  simply 
another  mighty  prince  of  the  Northern  Angles,  with  some- 
thing of  the  terrible  energy  of  Ethelfrid,  as  the  Christian 
Britons  of  Loidis  ^  would  feel  to  their  cost,  when  in  revenge 
for  the  poisoning  of  his  nephew  Hereric,  the  father  of  the 
future  St.  Hilda,  Edwin  expelled  their  king  Cerdic,  and 
annexed  Loidis  to  Deira  ^. 

^  See  PearsoD,  Hist.  EngL  i.  127. 

"^  For  the  baptism  of  Edwin,  on  April  11,  627,  took  place  within  the 
eleventh  year  of  his  reign  ;  Bede,  ii.  14. 

^  Henry  of  Huntingdon,  ii.  30.  As  a  canon  of  Lincoln  he  must  often 
have  heai;d  this  saying.  On  this  battle  see  Palgrave,  English  Common- 
wealth, p.  428  ;  Green,  p.  252. 

*  *  Eanfrid,  Oswald,  Oswy,  Oslac,  Oswudu,  Oslaf,  Offa,' — all  Edwin's 
nephews,  for  Acha  his  sister  had  married  Ethelfrid  ;  Bede,  iii.  6. 

^  See  Bede,  ii.  14,  iii.  24,  for  Loidis ;  it  was  a  district  dependent  on  the 
Cumbrian  British  realm,  and  embracing  the  lowest  portion  of  the  valleys 
of  the  Calder,  the  Aire,  and  the  Wharf ;  Whitaker,  '  Loidis  and  Elmete,* 
p.  I  ;  Palgrave,  Engl.  Comm.  p.  435.  The  name  of  course  survives  in  Leeds. 
Green,  Making  of  England,  pp.  64,  C54,  speaks  of  the  whole  territory  as 
*  Elmet.'  Rhys  distinguishes  the  two,  Celt.  Brit.  p.  130.  The  name  of 
Elmet  is  still  attached  to  Barwick,  N.E.  of  Leeds.  Bede  mentions  it  in 
ii.  14. 

®  Compare  the  App.  to  Nennius,  and  Bede,  iv.  23,  with  Hussey's  note. 
'  Nepotis,'  nephew,  not  (as  Florence  took  it)  grandson.  Hereric  was  the 
son  of  Edwin's  elder  brother,  and  probably  but  little  younger  than  Edwin 
liimself  (Green,  p.  248).     His  other  daughter  was  Hereswid. 


124  MellituSy  Archbishop. 

iww.  III.  Two  years  after  the  battle  of  the  Idle,  Laurence  died,  on 
the  2nd  of  February,  619,  having  added,  as  it  would  seem, 
to  the  churches  of  Canterbury  a  '  martyrium '  on  the  south 
of  the  cathedral,  in  honour  of '  the  Four  Crowned  Brothers,' 
Roman  martyrs  in  the  time  of  Diocletian  ^  He  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Mellitus,  whose  character,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  was  that  of  a  man  faithful  in  his  stewardship  of 
sacred  ordinances,  although  in  a  great  trial  of  patience  he 
despaired  of  the  English  mission.  He  exhibited,  as  arch- 
bishop, a  truly  pastoral  zeal ;  which,  as  in  Gregory's  case, 
overcame  the  painful  infirmity  of  the  gout  from  which 
he  suffered.  As  Bede  expresses  it '^  his  mind,  if  not  his 
feet,  'could  walk  healthily,  leaping  over  all  earthly  con- 
siderations, ever  winging  its  way  upward,  to  love  and 
follow  after  things  heavenly :  noble  in  birth,  nobler  still 
in  loftiness  of  spirit, — a  true  man  of  God,  enkindled  with 
the  fire  of  Divine  love,'  which,  says  Bede,  was  manifest 
in  him  when  he  caused  himself  to  be  carried  towards 
a  conflagration  that  was  laying  waste  a  large  part  of 
Canterbury,  and  occupied  himself  in  prayer  while  a  num- 
ber of  strong  men  were  vainly  struggling  to  quench  it ; 
whereupon  the  wind  shifted  round  to  the  north,  and  the 
rest  of  the  city — including  the  cathedral  and  the  episcopal 
house — was  saved.  This  incident,  and  the  dedication  of 
the  chapel  of  St.  Mary,  built  by  Eadbald  within  the  precinct 
of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul,  are  all  that  we  know  of  the  archi- 
episcopate  of  Mellitus.  He  died  on  the  24th  of  April,  624, 
and  Justus  of  Rochester  was  removed  to  Canterbury,  the 
circumstances  requiring  this  technical  departure  from  old 
canons.  Boniface  V  speedily  sent  him  a  pall,  and  authorized 
him  to  consecrate,  single-handed  ^,  a  new  bishop  for 
Rochester— the  person  selected  being  Romanus.  This 
letter  contains  an  allusion  to  the  disappointment  of  those 
more  brilliant  hopes  which  had  been  centred  in  the  Gre- 

^  Bede,  ii.  7.  For  these  martyrs  see  Alb.  Butler,  Nov.  8.  Their 
church  on  the  Caelian  was  founded  by  Honorius  I  in  622. 

^  lb.  :  'Erat  autem  Mellitus  corporis  quidem  infirmitate,  id  est,  podagra 
gravatus,  sed  mentis  gressibus  sanis  *  (qu.  sanus  ?). 

^  The  permission,  indeed,  was  general  :  *  Exigente  opportunitate.* 
Above,  p.  67.     This  pope  sat  from  618  or  619  to  625. 


Disappointment  of  early  hopes,  125 

gorian  mission.  The  Pope  consoled  Justus  by  observing  chai-.  m 
that  what  had  been  done  was  a  pledge  that  in  due  time  all 
would  be  done.  The  slow  progress  was  a  trial  of '  patience 
and  endurance  ^ : '  let  it  be  borne  in  faith,  and  with 
a  humble  confidence  that  the  actual  consolidation  of 
Christianity  in  Kent  would  promote  its  extension  among 
the  neighbouring  realms.  Justus  may  well  have  needed 
this  encouragement  at  the  end  of  those  twenty-three  years 
of  experience ;  the  programme  drawn  out  by  Gregory,  in 
one  of  the  letters  brought  by  himself  and  his  companions, 
appeared  still  to  be  so  far  from  fulfilment :  outside  Kent, 
not  a  single  kingdom  had  been  secured  for  Christianity, 
and  one  had  been  lost.  If  hopes  had  been  entertained  as 
to  East-Anglia,  they  had  been  blighted.  The  Celtic  bishops 
and  clergy  had  repelled  successive  overtures.  One  bright 
spot  there  was,  which  of  itself  suggested  a  coming  revival 
of  prosperity  ;  for  Eadbald,  who  had  once  been  such  a  cause 
of  despondency,  was  now,  as  it  were,  a  second  Ethelbert. 
He  who  had  refused  baptism,  and  emphasized  his  opposition 
to  Christianity  by  contracting  a  marriage  which  it  abhorred, 
was  now,  as  Boniface  had  written  after  reading  a  letter 
from  him^  on  the  occasion  of  the  accession  of  Justus, 
a  signal  example  of  '  a  real  conversion  and  of  an  unques- 
tionable faith.'  With  him  the  archbishops  and  their  clergy 
could  work  cordially :  at  his  bidding  churches  rose  up ; — 
one  such  has  already  been  mentioned,  and  another  may 
substantially  exist  in  that  venerable  church  of  St.  Mary, 
which,   attached   to  a  far   older    Roman   lighthouse,   and 

^  *  Laudabili  patientia  redemptionem  gentis  illius  expectatis  . . .  Salvati 
ergo  estis  spe  patientiae  et  tolerantiae  virtute .  .  .  quatenus  .  .  .  consum- 
mati  operis  vobis  merces  .  .  .  tribuatur/  &c.  He  quotes  Matt.  x.  22, 
xxviii.  20.  Compare  a  despondent  letter  of  St.  Boniface,  Ep.  22,  asking 
some  nuns  to  pray  for  him  that  he  might  not  die  'omnino  sine  fructu 
evangelii  sterilis,'  and  receive  'ultionem  infructuosi  laboris.*  Other 
great  missionaries  liad  their  faith  and  patience  sorely  tried  by  apparent 
failure.  When  St.  Anskar,  amid  the  '  angustiae '  of  his  work,  asked  Ebbo 
of  Keims  for  comfort,  the  answer  was,  '  I  am  assured  that  what  we  have 
begun  to  work  out  for  the  name  of  Christ  fructificare  habet  in  Domino. 
.  .  .  Veraciter  scio  quia  etsi  aliquando  propter  peccata  quodammodo 
impeditum  fuerit  .  .  .  non  tamen  unquam  penitus  exstinguetur,'  &c. 
Vit.  Ansk.  34  (Pertz,  Mon.  G.  H.  ii.  717). 

^  The  pope,  by  some  mistake,  calls  him  ^rfwZwald  ;  Bede,  ii.  8. 


126 


Edwin  a  suitor  for  Ethelburga, 


CHAP.  in. 


Marriage 
of  Ethel- 
burga to 
Edwin. 


'partly  built  out  of  Roman  materials/  crowns  the  southern 
cliff  within  the  limits  of  the  castle  of  Dover  ^.  Eadbald 
also  built  a  church  at  Folkestone,  and  his  daughter 
Eanswith,  who  founded  there  a  religious  society,  is  still 
remembered  as  the  local  saint  ^.  But  it  is  with  the  king's 
sister  ^thelburh  or  Ethelburga,  whom  her  family  called  by 
the  fond  name  of  Tata, '  the  darling,'  that  our  history  is 
now  concerned. 

It  must  have  been  very  soon  after  the  receipt  of  the 
Pope's  letter  that  envoys  from  Edwin  of  Northumbria 
presented  themselves  to  Eadbald.  In  the  name  of  their 
master  they  asked  for  Ethelburga's  hand  ^.  Eadbald 
answered  like  a  Christian,  and  more  uncompromisingly 
than  his  own  Frankish  grandfather  had  replied  to  Ethel- 
bert.  '  I  cannot  give  my  sister  to  a  heathen  :  my  religion 
forbids  it  ^!  The  answer  thus  returned  produced  a  second 
request  from  Edwin :  if  only  he  might  obtain  the  Kentish 
princess,  he  would  give  to  her  and  her  attendants  full 
liberty  of  worship, — and,  more  than  that,  he  would  himself 
be  willing  to  adopt  her  faith,  if  wise  men,  after  examining 
it,  should  pronounce  it  better  than  his  own.    We  can  easily 


*  Freeman,  iii.  535;  J.  H.  Parker,  Introd.  Goth.  Archit.  p.  10;  Allen, 
Monum.  Hist,  of  Brit.  Ch.  p.  28. 

^  See  Bugdale,  Mon.  Anglic,  i.  451,  that  Eanswith  chose  this  place  as 
'a  vulgi  frequentatione  remotum,*  and  her  father  built  there  a  church 
of  St.  Peter,  about  a.d.  630.  See  also  Alb.  Butler,  Sept.  12.  This  church 
was  washed  away  by  the  sea  in  the  tenth  century.  In  1885  some 
workmen  employed  in  the  present  church  found  behind  the  altar  a 
reliquary  containing  a  skull  and  some  bones,  which  had  evidently  been 
hidden  there  at  the  Reformation.  These  relics  of  the  foundress  are 
preserved  in  a  closed  recess,  on  the  north  side  of  the  sanctuary. 

^  Bede,  ii.  9.     He  writes  her  name  '-^dilbergae.* 

*  Bede  amplifies  the  refusal  :  '  Ne  fides  et  sacramenta  caelestis  Begis 
consortio  profanarentur  regis  qui  veri  Dei  cultus  esset  prorsus  ignarus.* 
'  Sacramenta '  is  with  Bede  an  elastic  term  ;  cp.  ii.  15,  *  fidem  et  sacra- 
menta Christi,'  iii.  7,  *  fidem  et  sacramenta  regni  caelestis,'  and  iii.  23, 
'verbum  et  sacramenta  fidei  .  .  .  miuistrare.*  Here  one  naturally  thinks 
of  'sacred  rites'  or  'ordinances':  as  in  iii.  3,  'baptismatis  sacramenta,* 
and  iii.  25,  '  celebratione  sacramentorum  caelestiuin.'  But  elsewhere 
'  sacramenta  fidei '  seems  to  mean  the  mysterious  truths  of  the  faith,  with 
a  knowledge  of  which  persons  can  be  *  imbued,'  iv.  16,  27,  which  they 
can  'keep,'  iv.  44,  3,  or  can  'abandon,'  iii.  30;  and  so  'fidem  et  sacra- 
menta' must  be  explained  in  iv.  23,  and  'sacramenta  fidei'  in  ii.  9,  15 ; 
iii.  I,  30 ;  iv.  14,  16.  37. 


Paultnus  sent  to  Northumbria,  127 

see  how  Justus  would  exhort  Eadbald  to  accept  this  offer,  chap.  m. 
What  if  this  were  the  opening  of  a  door,  the  first  beginning 
of  new  successes  which  should  verify  the  assurances  of 
Boniface,  the  long-expected  opportunity  which  might  fulfil 
Gregory's  aspirations  by  setting  Deira  free  from  'the  ire 
of  God  % '  Eadbald  took  his  resolution :  Edwin's  terms 
were  accepted,  and  Paulinus,  one  of  the  three  companions  Consecra- 
of  Justus  in  601,  was  consecrated  by  him  to  the  episcopate,  p^^j^nus 
on  the  2ist  of  July,  625,  in  order  that  he  might  be  to 
Ethelburga  in  her  Northern  home  what  Liudhard  had 
been  to  her  mother  in  the  still  heathen  Kent.  We  have 
now  reached  another  landmark :  the  mission  of  Paulinus 
was  the  first  onward  step  that  had  been  taken  since 
Mellitus  addressed  the  East-Saxons;  and  it  soon  proved 
to  be,  what  that  attempt  was  not,  a  great  event  for 
Christianity. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Paulinus  It  was,  then,  in  the  late  summer  of  625  that  Edwin  of 
Northumbria  received  his  bride  from  Kent.  He  had  been 
previously  married  to  Cwenburga,  '  the  daughter  of  Cearl 
king  of  the  Mercians^,'  and  she  had  left  him  two  sons, 
Osfrid  and  Eadfrid.  He  himself  was  just  foi-ty  years  old^. 
He  treated  his  new  wife's  chaplain  with  respect,  and  never 
interfered  with  their  religious  practices ;  but  he  showed  no 
disposition  to  fulfil  the  second  part  of  his  promise  by  insti- 
tuting an  examination  of  their  creed.  Paulinus  lived  in 
the  Northumbrian  court  for  some  months,  without  any 
apparent  prospect  of  doing  anything  as  a  missionary.  His 
personal  appearance  must  have  given  an  impression  of 
grave  dignity :  a  few  words  of  Bede  have  pictured  it  from 
the  description  transmitted  by  one  who  had  reason  to 
remember  it  well.  He  was  '  tall,  with  a  slight  stoop,  black 
hair,  a  thin  face,  an  aquiline  nose,  an  aspect  at  once  vener- 
able and  awe-striking^.'  He  had  with  him  as  his  con- 
fidential attendant  a  deacon  named  James,  who  was  alive 
in  Bede's  own  childhood,  and  whom  he  justly  describes  as 
'a  man  of  great  zeal  and  fame  in  Christ's  Church*.' 
Paulinus  made  some  attempts  to  win  over  the  heathens  of 
Deira ;  but  in  all  these  he  failed.  As  Fuller  in  his  quaint 
way  words  it,  '  Seeing  he  could  not  be  happy  to  gain,  he 

^  Bede,  ii.  14. 

'  For  he  was  forty-eight  when  he  died  in  633  ;  Bede,  ii.  20. 
'  '  Venerabilis  simul  et  terribilis,'  Bede,  ii.  16.     An  old  man  whom 
Paulinus   had  baptized   in  the  Trent  gave  this  account  to  Deda  abbot 
of  Partney,  who  related  it  to  Bede.     See  Wordsworth's  Eccl.  Sonnets, 
No.  15  :— 

'Mark  him,  of  shoulders  curved,  and  stature  tall. 
Black  hair,  and  vivid  eye,  and  meagre  cheek,'  &c. 
*  See  Bede,  ii.  16,  20 ;  iii.  25  ;  iv.  2. 


Attempt  on  Edwin  s  life,  129 

would  be  careful  to  save^'  If  'the  god  of  this  world  had  chap.  iv. 
blinded  the  eyes  '  of  the  Yorkshire  folk,  he  could  at  least, 
by  daily  exhortations,  do  his  best  to  guard  the  queen's 
attendants  from  the  contagion  of  Yorkshire  heathenism. 
So  passed  the  winter:  on  the  19th  of  April,  Easter-eve  in 
626,  Edwin,  then  living  at  a  royal  country-house  near 
Stamford-bridge,  had  a  narrow  escape  from  sudden  death  ^ : 
a  West-Saxon  named  Eumer,  sent  as  an  envoy  by  the 
West- Saxon  prince  Cwichelm,  who  was  then  reigning 
under  his  father  Kynegils  ^,  struck  at  Edwin  with  a  two- 
edged  and  poisoned  dagger ;  Lilla,  the  king's  most  trusted 
personal  retainer  ^,  rushed  forward  to  receive  the  blow,  but 
Edwin  himself  was  wounded  through  the  body  of  this 
devoted  servant.  On  that  same  '  most  holy  night  of  the 
Lord's  Passover,'  Ethelburga  bore  a  daughter ;  Edwin 
thanked  his  gods  in  the  hearing  of  Paulinus,  who  there- 
upon assured  him  that  he  had  been  praying  for  this  happy 
event.  The  king,  well  pleased,  promised  that  if  he  should  Baptism  of 
succeed  in  his  meditated  vengeance  on  Wessex,  he  would 

^  Fuller,  Ch.  Hist.  p.  72.  Compare  Bede,  ii.  9,  •  Laboravit  multum,'  &c. 
He  cites  2  Cor.  iv.  4. 

"^  Bede,  ii.  9  :  'juxta  amnem  Deruventionem '  (Derwent,  the  white  or 
clear  water,  a  tributary  of  the  Ouse).  The  'villa  regalis'  was  probably 
at  Aldby.  *  There  stood  a  royal  house  of  the  Northumbrian  kings,  the 
apparent  site  of  which  ...  a  mound  surrounded  by  a  fosse,  still  looks 
down  on  a  picturesque  point  of  the  course  of  the  river;'  Freeman,  iii. 
355.  For  other  'villae'  see  Bede,  ii.  14;  iii.  17,  22;  v.  4.  Compare  ib. 
iii.  21,  '  vico  regis.' 

^  Kynegils  began  to  reign  in  6ti  :  he  and  his  son  Cwichelm  fought 
against  the  Britons  at  Bampton  in  614,  and  slew  2065  :  see  the  Chronicle. 

*  'Minister,'  here  used  as  equivalent  to  'miles' :  'alium  de  militibus.' 
Imma  is  a  'miles'  and  'minister'  of  Alfwin,  iv.  22.  We  have  'ministri' 
in  ii.  13:  'ministri'  attend  Edwin  on  his  progresses,  ii.  16:  Oswald  has 
a  'minister'  charged  to  look  after  the  poor,  iii.  6.  Oswin  sits  at  the 
hearth  'cum  ministris,'  iii.  14.  Owin  is  'primus  ministiorum'  for  Ethel- 
dred,  iv.  3.  Sebbi  is  attended  on  his  deathbed  by  two  'ministri,'  iv.  11. 
Benedict  Biscop  was  a  'minister'  of  Oswy,  Hist.  Abb.  i,  and  Easterwin 
of  Egfrid,  ib.  7.  Alfred  and  the  Chronicle  call  Lilla  a  thegn  or  thane,  a  title 
variously  explained  as  'servant,'  '  freeman,' and  'warrior.'  See  Kemble, 
Saxons,  i.  168  ;  Freeman,  i.  87  ;  Bp.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  181,  &c.  In 
'Caedmon's'  paraphrase  the  angels  are  called  thanes  of  God.  Compare 
the  offices  of  'bower-thane'  (cubicularius),  dish-thane,  rede-thane. 
'Ministri'  often  subscribe  royal  charters;  see  Cod.  Dipl.  ii.  13,  29,  74, 
&c.     One,  by  Egbert,  is  signed  by  eight  '  ministri '  j  ib.  i.  320. 

k; 


130  Indecision  of  Edwin  s  mind. 

CHAP.  IV.  take  Christ  for  his  Lord :  in  earnest  of  which,  he  at  once 
gave  over  the  infant  to  Paulinus  '  to  be  dedicated  to  Christ.' 
Accordingly,  at  Pentecost  \  she  was  brought  to  baptism, 
being  the  first  of  the  Northumbrian  race  who  received  it, 
with  eleven  ^  others  of  her  household.  The  little  Eanfled 
was  reserved  for  a  high  place  among  the  Christian  princesses 
of  England  ^.  Her  father,  when  his  wound  was  cured, 
descended  like  a  '  Destroyer '  on  Wessex,  slew  five  of  its 
sub-kings'*,  and  returned  triumphant:  but  he  still  deferred 
full  performance  of  his  promise,  although  he  absented 
himself  from  idolatrous  observances.  A  man  of  thoughtful  ^, 
cautious  temperament,  trained  by  his  early  misfortunes  in 
reticence  and  vigilance,  with  nothing  of  the  enthusiast 
about  him, — a  man  of  middle  life,  whose  impulsiveness,  if 
he  had  ever  had  any,  was  extinct, — hating  the  notion  of 
taking  a  false  step,  determined  not  to  be  hurried  in  any 
grave  matter, — can  we  not  easily  imagine  what  Edwin 
was  in  those  eventful  months,  during  which,  no  doubt, 
Ethelburga  felt  the  sore  sickness  of  hope  deferred  %  She 
was  urged  by  a  letter  from  the  Pope  ^  to  use  all  her 
influence  in  behalf  of  her  husband's  conversion :  the  letter 

^  *  On  the  holy  day  of  Pentecost,'  Bede :  but  he  means,  of  course,  the 
eve,  a  solemn  time  for  baptisms  :  so  S.  Chron.  Whitsun-eve,  that  year, 
fell  on  June  7.  Compare  the  Gregorian  '  prayers  at  mass '  after  Whitsun- 
eve  baptisms,  Muratori,  ii.  88  ;  the  collect  prays  '  ut  .  .  .  lux  tuae  lucis 
corda  eorum,  qui  per  gratiam  tuam  renati  sunt,  Sancti  Spiritus  illus- 
tratione  confirmet.'     See  above,  p.  57. 

2  One  form  of  the  Chron.,  'twelve,'  includes  Eanfled. 

^  See  Bede,  ii.  20  ;  iii.  15,  24,  25  ;  iv,  26 ;  v.  19. 

*  On  these  five  sub-kings,  as  indicating  the  lack  of  unity  in  Wessex,  see 
Freeman,  L  27.  Yet  they  were  apparently  '  princes  of  the  line  of  Cerdic  ; ' 
ib.  and  99.  A  king  had  often  a  prince  of  his  house  associated  with  him 
as  sub-king  of  a  district :  as  were  Cwichelm  in  Wessex,  Egric  (for  a  time) 
in  East  Anglia,  Ethelwald,  Alchfrid,  Alfwin  in  Northumbria,  Peada, 
Merewald,  and  Osric  in  Mercia. 

^  'Thoughtful  Edwin;'  Wordsworth,  Eccl.  Sonjaets,  No.  15. 

^  Bede,  ii.  11.  Boniface  says  in  this  letter  that  he  has  heard  with 
grief  that  Edwin  'up  to  that  time  has  delayed  to  listen  to  the  preachers  : ' 
and  this  suggests  a  difficulty,  in  that  Ethelburga  could  not  have  reached 
York  until  the  end  of  July,  and  the  tidings  of  Edwin's  'delays'  could 
hardly  have  reached  Rome  before  the  end  of  October,  when  Boniface  was 
dead.  Could  'Boniface,'  in  the  address  of  the  letters,  be  a  scribe's  error 
for  '  Honorius '  ? 


His  slozv  progress  towards  conversion.   131 

had  been  delayed,  if  we  are  to  take  Bede's  words  literally  \  chap.  iv. 
on  its  journey  to  Britain,  for  Boniface  V  had  died  in  the 
October  of  625,  and  was  therefore  near  the  end  of  his  life 
when  he  thus  wrote,  reminding  Ethelburga  of  the  text 
about '  the  unbelieving  husband,'  and  in  a  companion  letter 
exhorting  Edwin  to  forsake  the  senseless  worship  of  idols, 
the  'follies  of  Pagan  temples,  the  deceitful  flatteries  of 
auguries '  (such,  for  instance,  as  Ethelbert  had  employed), 
and  to  secure  eternal  life  by  confessing  the  undivided 
Trinity.  The  latter  epistle  expressly  suggests  the  breaking 
to  pieces  of  idols  as  a  demonstration  of  their  impotence. 
'  You,  who  have  received  a  living  spirit  from  the  Lord,  are 
assuredly  superior '  to  things '  framed  by  your  own  subjects^.' 
These  arguments  were  perhaps  no  longer  apposite  ;  Edwin 
was  in  an  untenable  half-way  position,  neither  an  idolater 
nor  a  believer ;  his  difficulty  consisted  in  the  humiliation 
demanded  by  Christianity ;  it  was  hard  for  the  self-reliant 
Teuton  '  to  bow  down  and  receive  the  mystery  of  the  life- 
giving  Cross  ^.  Paulinus,  whenever  he  had  opportunity, 
argued,  pleaded,  exhorted:  still  the  king  was  undetermined, 
and  used  '  often  to  sit  for  hours  in  silence  '^,'  pondering  the 
great  alternative.  At  last,  during  one  of  these  moods, 
Paulinus  drew  near,  laid  his  right  hand  on  his  head,  and 
asked,  *  Do  you  recognize  this  sign  ? '  The  allusion  to 
words  and  gestures  which  had  either  formed  part  of  a 
dream,  and  had  as  such  been  communicated,  in  some  way 

^  'Quo  tempore  .  .  .  accepit,'  Bede,  ii.  lo.  The  pope's  reference  to  'the 
preachers '  implies  that  Paulinus  had  some  attendant  clergy.  He  sends  • 
Ethelburga  a  silver  mirror  and  a  gilt  ivory  comb,  and  to  Edwin  a  soldier's 
shirt  (so  Jerome,  Epist.  64.  11,  uses  'camisia')  ornamented  with  gold, 
and  a  camp-cloak  of  Ancyran  fashion, — all  these  as  *  blessings  (i.e.  gifts)  of 
their  protector  St.  Peter.* 

2  For  'constructioni'  we  must  read  '  constructione.'  In  the  corrupt 
passage,  'Ejus  ergo,'  for  *  dilatandi  subdi'  we  might  read  '  dilatanda  (sc. 
misericordia)  subsidio,'  to  be  extended  far  and  wide  for  the  assistance  of 
His  whole  creation.  The  letter  is  interesting  as  dwelling  on  the  attain- 
ableness,  through  revelation,  of  a  knowledge  of  God  which  is  real,  though 
it  does  not  amount  to  'comprehension,' and  also  on  the  interior  unity 
{=  * coinherence ')  of  the  Holy  Trinity. 

'*  Bede,  ii.  12. 
.    *  Bede,  ii.  9,  'saepe  diu  solus  residens  :'  and  ib.  12,  *  horis  competen- 
tibus  solitarius.' 

K  2 


132  Paultnus  prevails  with  Edwin. 


CHAP.  I^^ 


Conver- 
sion of 
Edwin. 


Witena- 
gemot  of 
Goodman- 
ham. 


unexplained,  to  Paulinus  ',  or  had  been  really  employed  by 
an  unknown  visitant  with  whom  Paulinus  was  acquainted^, 
or  who  may  have  been  Paulinus  himself  ^  struck  home  at 
once,  and  told  on  Edwin  decisively.  Trembling  with  awe, 
as  if  in  the  presence  of  one  who  could  read  his  secret 
history,  he  was  about  to  throw  himself  at  the  bishop's  feet. 
Paulinus  was  master  of  the  situation;  he  raised  him  up, 
and  in  a  tone  of  friendly  confidence  referred  to  what  had 
been  done  for  him,  and  what  he  was  pledged  to  do  in 
return.  '  See,  you  have  escaped  those  perils ; — see,  you 
have  been  elevated  to  this  kingship  :  delay  no  longer  to 
embrace  the  faith  and  the  precepts  of  Him  who  wrought 
that  deliverance,  and  who  granted  that  exaltation.'  '  I  will 
do  so,'  said  Edwin  :  '  but  I  will  first  confer  with  my  chief 
friends  and  counsellors,  so  that,  if  they  are  willing,  they 
may  become  Christians  also.'  Paulinus  assented :  Edwin 
assembled  his  '  Witan  * '  near  '  Godmundingaham,'  now 
Goodmanham,  some  twenty-three  miles  from  York ;  it  was 
probably  about  the  close  of  626,  or  very  early  in  627. 

At  this  memorable  gathering  he  asked  his  '  wise  men ' 
individually  what  they  thought  of  the  new  faith,  which 
now  for  more  than  a  year  had  been  impersonated  in 
Paulinus,  the  bishop,  there  present.  The  chief  Pagan 
priest,  whom  Bede  calls  Coifi^,  answered  with  a  frank 
avowal  of   self-interest  which  showed  a  nature  of   coarse 

*  Lingard  (Hist.  E.  i.  83)  and  Turner  (Angl.-Sax.  i.  356)  suppose  that 
Edwin  had  had  a  dream,  and  that  Paulinus  had  heard  of  it. 

'  Churton  thinks  that  the  strange  visitor  was  a  Christian  who  had 
accompanied  Redwald  from  Kent ;  E.  E.  Ch.  p.  56. 

^  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  75  ;  Hook,  i.  103  ;  Raine,  Fast.  Ebor.  i.  38. 

*  See  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  148.  Godmundingaham  has  been  explained 
as  the  place  under  the  mund  or  protection  of  the  gods ;  Taylor's  Words 
and  Places,  p.  335  ;  but  also  (Murray's  Yorkshire,  p.  131)  as  the  home  of  the 
sons  of  Godmund.  It  is  near  Weighton,  which  means  '  sacred  enclosure.' 
This  Witan  ce-tainly  did  not  include  the  people  as  such,  see  Bede,  ii.  13. 

'  This  has  been  called  a  Cdtic  name  for  a  pontiff;  and  Palgrave  infers 
that  Druidism  had  won  its  way  in  Deira ;  Engl.  Commonw.  p.  155.  But 
it  is  answered  that  Coiti  is  an  equivalent  to  the  Saxon  Coefig,  and  means 
*  the  active  one.*  Collier's  version  of  this  speech  is  a  curious  specimen  of 
his  humour,  and  also  of  his  utter  want  of  the  sense  of  congruity  ;  i.  196. 
Coifi  puts  bluntly  the  argument  used  by  a  Swedish  'elder,'  Vit.  S. 
Anskar.  27  :  '  Nobiscum  quando  nostros  propitios  habere  non  possumus 
deos,  bonum  est  hujus  dei  gratiam  habere.' 


The  Witan  and  the  Thane's  speech.     133 

mould :  *  The  old  worship  seems  to  me  worth  nothing :  no  chap.  iv. 
man  has  practised  it  more  than  I,  and  yet  many  fare  better, 
and  have  more  favour  at  your  hand.  If  the  gods  had  any 
power,  they  would  rather  help  Die,  who  have  served  them 
more  than  others.  Let  us  then  see  what  this  new  lore  is 
good  for ;  if  it  is  better  than  the  old,  let  us  straightway 
follow  it.'  Far  different,  and  indescribably  suggestive  and 
pathetic,  was  the  speech  of  a  thane  ^,  who  expressed  in 
a  vivid  simile  that  bewilderment  as  to  the  mystery  of  life 
which  weighed  heaviest  on  the  worthiest  of  the  heathen : 
'  I  will  tell  you,  O  king,  what  methinks  man's  life  is  like. 
Sometimes,  when  your  hall  is  lit  up  for  supper  on  a  wild 
winter's  evening,  and  warmed  by  a  fire  in  the  midst  ^, 
a  sparrow^  flies  in  by  one  door,  takes  shelter  for  a  moment 
in  the  warmth,  and  then  flies  out  again  by  another  door, 
and  is  lost  in  the  stormy  darkness.  No  one  in  the  hall  sees 
the  bird  before  it  enters,  nor  after  it  has  gone  forth ;  it  is 
only  seen  while  it  hovers  near  the  fire.  So  it  is,  I  ween, 
with  this  brief  span  of  our  life  in  this  world  ^ ;  what  has 
gone  before  it,  what  will  come  after  it, — of  this  we  know 
nothing.     If  the  strange  teacher  can  tell  us,  by  all  means 

^  The  speech  is  versified  simply  and  touchingly  in  Professor  Palgrave's 
Visions  of  England,  p.  27  ;  and  compare  Wordsworth's  Eccl.  Sonnets, 
No.  16  :— 

'Man's  life  is  like  a  sparrow,  mighty  king,'  &c. 
Cp.  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  29  ;  Milman,  ii.  238 ;  Freeman's  Old-Engl. 
History,  p.  57 ;  Green,  Making  of  Engl.  p.  263.  The  speaker  is  called  by 
Bede  one  of  the  '  optimates '  :  Alfred  renders,  *  Ealdorman.'  We  find 
*  optimatibus '  in  iii.  30.  As  to  the  winter  banquets,  see  Bede's  '  Cucu- 
lus ; ' — Hiems  says, 

'Sunt  mihi  divitiae,  sunt  et  convivia  laeta, 
Est  requies  dulcis,  calidus  est  ignis  in  aede.' 

^  '  While  you  are  sitting  at  supper  cum  ducibus  ac  ministris  tuis.'  The 
'dux'  appears  in  Bede,  iii.  24  (three  Mercian  duces\  iv.  13,  15  ;of  Sussex). 
It  seems  to  be  here  equivalent  to  ealdorman.  So  Alfred,  '  with  thine 
ealdormen  and  thanes.'     See  Kemble,  ii.  125  ff. 

^  Cp.  M.  Aurelius'  'Ad  Seipsum,'  vi.  11,  that  'to  set  one's  heart  on  what 
is  in  continual  flux  is  as  if  one  were  to  begin  to  love  ti  iojv  irapancTOfjLivojv 
oTpovdiuv,  while  it  has  already  passed  away  out  of  sight.' 

*  'The  Northern  nations  .  .  .  demanded  immortality,'  and  hence  'they 
took  Christianity  to  their  hearts  ; '  Merivale,  Conversion  of  Northern 
Nations,  p.  130.  He  gives  a  free  rendering  of  this  speech,  and  proceeds 
to  dwell  on  the  '  intense  realization  of  another  life,'  which  characterized 
the  converted  Teutons. 


134        National  adoption  of  Christianity. 

GHAP.  IV.  let  him  be  heard.'  The  words  struck  home  to  the  listeners' 
hearts,  as  fraught  with  a  solemn  and  urgent  reality ;  they 
felt,  with  the  speaker,  that  they  must  not  miss  such  an 
opportunity  of  learning  more  about  the  *  whence '  and  the 
*  whither '  of  their  existence,  of  obtaining  some  sure 
warrant  for  the  hopes  which  sti-uggled  with  dark  un- 
certainties as  they  thought  of  death  and  of  the  Beyond ; 
and  just  then,  at  the  right  moment,  the  chief  priest 
proposed  that  Paulinus  should  set  forth  his  doctrine. 
Paulinus,  of  course,  welcomed  and  used  the  opportunity; 
and  Coifi,  as  if  lifted  up  by  the  power  of  the  discourse  into 
a  higher  strain  of  feeling,  spoke  out :  '  Now  I  understand 
what  the  truth  is :  I  have  long  known  that  it  was  not  with 
us ;  but  now  I  see  it  shining  out  clearly  in  this  teaching. 
Let  us  destroy  those  useless  temples  and  altars,  and  give 
them  up  to  the  curse  and  the  flame ! '  Then,  at  last, 
Edwin,  as  king,  publicly  accepted  the  Gospel,  and  asked 
Coifi  who  should  begin  the  work  of  desecrating  the  altars 
and  temples  of  idolatry.  '  That  will  I  do,'  was  the  prompt 
answer:  'who  could  more  fittingly  destroy,  as  a  lesson 
for  all,  what  once  I  reverenced  in  my  folly'?'  It  was 
unlawful  for  a  high  priest  to  bear  arms,  or  to  ride  except 
on  a  mare ;  therefore  Coifi  emphasized  his  resolution  by 
calling  for  arms  and  a  horse,  and,  thus  equipped,  he  rode 
straight  at  the  venerated  temple  of  Goodmanham,  hurled 
his  spear  against  it,  and  bade  his  companions  set  fire  to 
the  building  together  with  its  surrounding  sacred  pre- 
cinct '.  Thus  did  Northumbria,  by  a  national  act,  accept 
Baptism  Christianity.  The  king  caused  a  little  wooden  chapel 
o  Edwin.  ^^  1^^  hastily  reared  at  York,  on  part  of  the  ground  now 
covered  by  the  glorious  Minster ;  and  within  its  walls 
he  went  through  the  training  of  a  catechumen^,  and 
received  baptism  on  Easter-eve  ^,  April  1 1, 627.  His  nobles 
were  baptized  with  him ;    and  among  the  neophytes  was 

^  *Cum  omnibus  septis  suis' — the  whole  Te/xevos  or  '  frith-geard ' ; 
Thorpe's  Glossary  ;  also  called  '  healh-tun,'  Chron.  Abingd.  ii.  483.  Hei-e 
Bede  shows  his  fondness  for  Virgilian  quotation  :  '  Quas  ipse  saeraverat 
aras.'     Cp.  Aen.  ii.  502.     See  too  Bede,  ii.  12 ;  iv.  26. 

*  'Cum  catechizaretur.'     Bode,  ii.  14;  see  below,  p.  137. 

2  'Die  sancto  Paschae'  means  here  the  eve.     The  Cambrian  Annals 


Great  power  of  Edwin,  135 

his    grandniece    Hild,    the    future    St.    Hilda,    abbess    of  chap.  iv. 
Whitby  ^     Many  of  the  people  followed  his  example.     It 
was  the  birthday  of  the  Northumbrian  Church. 

The  realm  of  Edwin,  stretching  from  the  Humber  to 
the  Forth,  and  including  '  Edwin's  burgh  ^ '  on  its  northern 
frontier, — the  widespread  supremacy  which  he  exercised 
throughout  all  the  kingdoms  save  that  of  Kent,  and  also 
over  the  Britons  of  the  Isle  of  Man,  over  '  British '  territory 
between  the  Dee  and  the  Cumbrian  Derwent  ^,  and  that  of 
Mona  ^,  which  after  his  conquest  of  it  was  called  '  Anglesey,* 
may  represent  to  us  the  great  political  importance  of  the 
baptism  of  the  fifth  'Bretwalda.'  So  effective  was  the 
'  peace  ^ '  established  under  his  government  that,  according 
to  a  proverb  still  current  in  Bede's  time  : — 

When  Edwin  ruled  in  Angle-land, 
Mother  and  babe  from  strand  to  strand 
Might  pass  unscathed  by  Angle  hand^ 

say,  '  Run  filius  Urbgen  baptizavit  eum.'  So  the  '  Appendix  *  to 
'Nennius,'  'Si  quis  scire  voluerit  quis  eos  baptizaverit,  Rum  map 
Urbgen  baptizavit  eos,  et  per  quadraginta  dies  non  cessavit  baptizare 
omne  genus  Ambronum.'  This  is  plainly  a  Welsh  fiction  (possibly  based 
on  some  confusion  between  Paulinus  and  Paul  Hen,  the  Welsh  founder 
of  Whitland;,  in  which  Bede's  account  of  Paulinus'  baptizing  Northum-. 
brians  during  thirty-six  days  is  simply  transferred  to  '  Rum.'  Urbgen,  or 
Urien,  had  fought  against  Theoderic  some  forty  years  before  this  event  s 
even  if  his  son  were  then  alive  and  were  a  priest,  Paulinus  would  never 
have  yielded  to  him  the  privilege  of  baptizing  Edwin.  Two  MSS.  of 
'Nennius,'  appealing  to  the  authority  of  two  Welsh  bishops,  read  'Run 
...  id  est,  Paulinus.'  This  identification  is  to  me  incredible,  although 
Bp.  Browne  inclines  to  think  that  Paulinus  may  have  been  a  Briton 
trained  in  Rome,  Lessons  from  E.  Engl.  Ch.  Hist.  p.  53.  See  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  Councils,  i.  213. 

^  Bede,  iv.  23, 

"^  Freeman,  i.  35;  Burton,  Hist.  Scot.  i.  281  ;  Green,  p,  253.  Its  old 
name  was  ;^not  Eiddin,  but)  Agned. 

^  Rhys,  Celt.  Brit.  p.  138.  He  uses  the  form  'Brythons'  as  mere  distinctive. 

*  '  Mevanias  insulas/  Bede,  ii.  5,  9.  See  Lappenberg,  i.  149.  Aberfraw 
in  Anglesey  was  the  capital  of  Gwynedd  or  North  Wales. 

5  Bede,  ii.  16 ;  Malmesb.  G.  R.  1.  48.  See  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  208  : 
'The  peace,  as  it  was  called,  the  primitive  alliance  for  mutual  good 
behaviour  .  .  .  was  from  the  beginning  of  monarchy  under  the  protection 
of  the  king,*  and  it  was  in  later  days  that  the  '  national  peace  of  which 
he  was  the  guardian  '  became,  in  a  personal  sense,  his  peace.  For  Edwin's 
overlordship  see  Freeman,  i.  553,  and  Engl.  Towns  and  Districts,  p.  276. 

*  Compare  the  Irish  saying  about  the  reign  of  Malachy  '  of  the  Collar  of 
Gold.' 


136 


Anglian  Bishopric  of  York. 


CHAP.  IV.  At  every  clear  spring  along  the  high  roads,  he  set  up  posts 
with  brazen  drinking-cups ;  and  no  man  durst  use  them  for 
any  other  purpose — so  greatly  was  he  feared  or  loved.  He 
loved  state  and  kingly  display:  not  only  in  battle,  but  in  times 
of  peace,  wherever  Edwin  was  on  a  progress,  a  banner-statf 
with  a  tuft  of  feathers — *  the  standard,'  says  Bede,  '  called 
by  the  Romans  tufa  ^ ' — was  borne  before  him  and  gave 
warning  of  his  approach.  Such  was  Edwin  as  a  monarch 
and  suzerain ;  as  a  convert,  he  was  thoroughly  true  to  his 
Pauiinus  tardily- formed  convictions.  He  established  Paulinus  as 
York?^  ^  bishop  of  York,  and  *  began  to  build  a  larger  and  more 
august  church  of  stone,  square  in  form,  in  a  space  enclosing ' 
the  wooden  one  ^  in  which  he  had  kept  his  first  Easter,  and 
listened  to  the  '  Alleluias '  then  at  last  poured  forth  by 
'Anglian'  worshippers  in  the  realm  and  royal  city  of 
*  Ella.'  This  new  church  was  to  be  dedicated  to  St.  Peter ; 
but  Edwin  did  not  live  to  see  its  walls  raised  to  their  full 
height, — and  its  non-completion  during  his  reign  was 
symbolic  of  much  that  he  saw  begun  and  not  finished  in 
the  work  of  Christianizing  his  kingdom. 

There  was,  indeed,  a  great  impulse  given,  a  great  ardour 
excited  :  not  only  were  royal  baptisms  solemnized,  as  when 
Edwin's  sons  by  his  former  wife  entered  the  '  laver  ^,'  and 
when  children  of  Ethelburga  followed, — of  whom  two  died 
while  still  clad  in  their  white  christening-garments  *, — but 


^  Cp.  Ducange  in  v  ;  a  standard  *ex  consertis  plumarum  globis.* 

^  Bede,  ii.  14  :  'Mox  autem  ut  baptisma,'  &c.  See  Chron.  of  Anc.  Brit. 
Church,  p,  137.  This  wooden  sanctuary  was  carefully  preserved,  and 
enriched  with  splendid  altars  and  vessels,  by  archbishop  Albert ;  Raine, 
i.  104.  See  the  plan  of  the  ancient  Eboracum  in  Freeman,  iv.  202.  Some 
stones  of  Edwin's  church  may  still  exist  in  the  crypt  of  York  Minster; 
Freeman,  Norm.  Conq.  v.  610;  Ornsby,  Dioc.  Hist.  York,  p.  19;  Raine, 
Historians  of  Church  of  York,  i.  p.  xxiii ;  but  they  have  been  assigned  to 
the  time  of  archbishop  Albert  (a.d.  767-781).  Edwin  now  restored  the 
temporal  glory  of  the  city  which  had  been  imperial ;  Freeman,  Engl. 
Towns  and  Districts,  p.  272. 

^  Bede,  ii.  14.  Osfrid  and  Eadfrid  ;  also  Osfrid's  child  YflR,  and  Osric 
the  nephew  of  Ella  and  first-cousin  of  Edwin  ;  cp.  ib.  iii.  i ;  Green,  p.  248. 

*  *  Albati.'  Cp.  Bede,  v.  7,  Cadwalla  fell  sick  *in  albis  adhuc  positus.' 
On  the  white  garments  or  *  chrisoms '  of  the  new  baptized,  see  Bingham, 
xii.  4.  1-3.  Gregory  I  alludes  to  a  'birrus  albus'  as  put  on  just  after 
baptism  ;   Ep.  ix.  6.     See  too  ib.  viii.  i  and  23,  on  his  supplying  such 


Mission-labours  of  Paulinus.  137 

the  people  crowded  eagerly  to  hear  the  bishop,  and  to  chap.  iv. 
present   themselves   as  candidates  for   reception  into   his 
fold.     In  one  of  his  missionary  journeys,  he  was  occupied  Baptisms 
for  thirty-six  days,  from  morning  to  night,  at  the  royal  ^^^^^^^ 
'  vill '  of  Yevering  under   the  Cheviots,  in   the  work   of 
'catechizing^  and  baptizing,'  in  other  words,  'instructing 
the  people,  who  flocked  to  him  from  all  the  villages  and 
places,  in  the  word  of  Christ's  salvation,  and  washing  them, 
when  instructed  ^,  with  the  laver  of  remission,  in  the  river 
Glen  ^  which  flowed  close  by.'     Another  place  in  the  same 
Bernician  district,  not  mentioned  by  Bede,  preserves  the 
tradition   of  a  similar  visit   in  its  name   of  Pallinsbum, 
where  a  lake,  probably  used  for  baptism,  lies  some  three 
miles  off*  the  Tweed.     But,  as  bishop  of  York,  Paulinus  and  in 
naturally  spent  most  of  his  time  in  Deira:  the  scenes  of    ^^^^* 
the  Glen  were  reproduced,  to  some  extent,  at  that  tranquil 
and  beautiful  spot  where  the  Swale  glides,  soft  and  shallow, 
beside  the  high  wooded  bank  that  represents  the  Roman 
camp  of  Caractonium,  just  above  the  existing  Catterick- 
bridge.    In  these  general  baptisms,  as  in  other  ministrations, 
Paulinus  would  be  'served'  by  his  deacon  James*,  who 
afterwards   laboured   many   years   in   the   neighbourhood 

garments  for  poor  converts.  For  the  death,  'in  albis,'  of  the  infant  son 
of  Clovis,  see  Greg.  Tur.  H.  Fr.  ii.  29 ;  and  St.  Patrick's  letter  to  the  men 
of  Coroticus,  mentioning  '  neophyti  in  veste  Candida,'  and  on  the  death  of 
some  converts  while  'albati,'  Vit.  Anskar.  24.  Compare  the  Baptismal 
Office  of  1549. 

^  See  Bingham,  b.  x.  c.  i.  s.  5. 

2  In  utter  defiance  of  this  expression  Whitaker  says,  'There  w^ere  no 
opportunities  of  previous  instruction ; '  Loidis  and  El  mete,  p.  300. 
Compare,  on  the  combination  of  instruction  and  baptism,  Bede,  iii.  i, 
*  catechizati,  et  baptismatis  gratia  recreati; '  iii.  7,  'rex  ipse  catechi- 
Ziitus  ; '  iii.  22,  •'  in  verbo  fidei  et  ministerio  baptizandi  ; '  iii.  26,  '  praedi- 
candi,  baptizandi ; '  iv.  16,  '  instructos  .  .  .  ac  .  .  .  ablutos.'     See  also  v.  6. 

^  The  Glen  appears  in  the  Arthurian  legend,  in  connexion  with  the 
first  of  the  'twelve'  battles;  Nennius,  64.  But  this  transference  of 
Arthur's  activities  to  the  North  is  an  addition  to  the  genuine  story ; 
Freeman,  Eng.  Towns  and  Districts,  p.  438.     See  above,  p.  26. 

*  Cp,  Bede,  iii.  20,  on  Thomas,  '  the  deacon  of '  Felix.  For  the  ancient 
close  relation  of  the  deacon  to  his  bishop  see  S.  Athan.  de  Fuga,  24;  and 
the  story  of  St.  Laurence.  So  Const.  Apost.  ii.  44  :  '  Let  the  deacon  be 
the  ear,  eye,  and  mouth  of  the  bishop.'  Cp.  Bingham,  b.  ii.  c.  20.  s.  16-18 
(i.  302;. 


138 


Character  of  Paulinus'  work. 


CHAP.  IV.  of  Catterick.  Yorkshire  traditions  bring  Paulinus  to 
Dewsbury  and  to  Easingwold:  but  if  we  ask  whether 
he  raised  any  permanent  memorials  of  these  circuits,  the 
answer  might  be  that  neither  church  nor  altar,  nor  even 
a  cross  such  as  might  mark  a  service-station,  was  erected 
during  his  episcopate  in  Bernicia  ^ ;  while  as  to  Deira, 
not  only  were  there  no  baptisteries,  but  Bede  mentions 
as  exceptional  a  (wooden)  'basilica,'  with  a  stone  altar, 
near  a  royal  '  vill '  at  Campodonum,  a  place  which  Alfred's 
version  names  Donafeld,  and  which  may  be  probably 
identified  with  Doncaster  2,  and  in  that  case  must  be  dis- 
tinguished from  the  Roman  station  of  Cam^odunum,  which 
has  been  variously  placed  at  Slack  near  Huddersfield,  and 
Tanfield  near  Ripon  ^.  Paulinus  had  not  time  to  consolidate 
his  work  in  Bernicia ;  and  even  in  Deira  he  could  only  lay 
a  foundation,  on  which  another  saint  was  destined  to  build. 
Such,  for  the  six  years  of  his  Northumbrian  episcopate, 
was  the  work  of  Paulinus,— a  work  of  foundation,  not 
properly  of  construction.  He  had,  it  seems,  but  few 
clergy :  he  could  do  little  else  than  travel  about,  planting 
wherever  he  best  could,  in  the  hope  that  he  might  after- 
wards be  enabled  to  water:  and  we  may  best  judge  of 
his  capacity  for  organizing  a  church  by  what  he  did  in 
the  way  of  preparing  for  its  organization.  'The  labours 
of  this  great  missionary  must  have  been  prodigious  ^.'     He 


Paulinus 
work. 


*  Bede,  iii.  2 ;  ii.  14.  The  cross  which  Camden  heard  of  as  having 
once  existed  at  Dewsbury,  with  the  inscription  '  Hie  Paulinus  praedicavit 
et  celebravit,*  must  have  been  of  later  date  :  an  imitation  of  it,  in  form 
of  a  Saxon  wheel-cross,  was  accidentally  destroyed  in  1812 ;  Whitaker's 
Loidis  and  Elmete,  p.  299.  There  was  another  cross  near  Easingwold  in 
the  reign  of  Edward  I ;  Raine,  i.  42.  Near  Easingwold,  too,  is  Brafferton, 
where  local  tradition  says  that  Paulinus  baptized ;  Murray's  Yorkshire, 
p.  230.  The  erection  of  crosses  at  preaching-stations  is  said  to  have  been 
a  practice  of  St.  Kentigern  :  see  above,  p.  34. 

2  See  Whitaker's  Loidis,  p.  152,  and  Hunter's  Deanery  of  Doncaster, 
i.  5.  One  argument  for  Doncaster  (the  Roman  Danum)  is  that  this 
church  was  burned  after  Penda  had  slain  Edwin  at  Hatfield,  a  few  miles 
east  of  Doncaster.     See  also  Ornsby's  Dioc.  Hist.  York,  p.  20. 

•'  For  these  two  views  see  Whitaker,  Loidis  and  Elmete,  p.  374,  and 
Raine,  Fast.  Ebor.  i.  43.  Cambodunum  is  in  the  second  '  Iter,'  between 
Tadcaster  and  Manchester. 

*  Raine,  Fast.  Ebor.  i.  42. 


Character  of  Paulinus'  work.  139 

has  been  blamed  for  appealing  to  temporal  motives,  by  chap.  n-. 
promising  earthly  prosperity  as  the  reward  of  conversion ; 
but  it  is  remarkable  that  in  his  recorded  words  to  Edwin, 
when  he  reminded  him  of  'the  token,'  his  assurances  as 
to  the  future  take  a  purely  spiritual  form  ^  Within 
certain  limits,  he  might  not  unreasonably  believe  that  *  the 
promise  of  the  life  that  now  is '  might  be  included  among 
the  topics  of  a  missionary  sermon :  but  to  say  that  his 
converts  were  '  encouraged '  by  him  to  test  '  the  merits 
of  a  religious  scheme  by  the  temporal  advantages  which 
followed  its  reception^'  is  a  grave  unfairness  to  his  memory, 
and  to  the  evidence  furnished  by  Bede.  That  solemn 
setting  forth  of  '  the  way  of  salvation '  through  the  Cross, 
that  emphatic  warning  as  to  a  choice  made  in  time  for 
all  eternity,  that  assiduous  indefatigable  '  catechizing '  and 
'  preaching  of  the  word  of  God,'  came,  we  must  needs  think, 
from  the  heart  of  a  man  'whose  whole  mind  was  set  on 
bringing  the  Northumbrian  people  to  the  recognition  of 
the  truth  ^,'  and  characterized  an  episcopate  which,  though 
short  in  itself,  endeared  his  name  for  ages  to  their  memory. 

But  he  was  not  content  to  work  for  them  alone.  Very  Paulinus 
soon  after  the  baptism  of  Edwin,  he  had  not  only  thought, 
but  acted,  in  behalf  of  their  neighbours  in  the  district 
of  Lindsey^,  just  south  of  the  Humber.  He  preached 
in  the  old  Roman  hill-town  of  Lincoln^;  and  its  reeve, 
or  '  prefect '  as  Bede  calls  him  ^,  Blaecca  by  name,  became 

^  Bede,  ii.  12:  'A  perpetuis  malorum  tormentis  te  liberabit,  et  aeterni 
secum  regni  in  caelis  faciet  esse  participem.' 

'^  Hook,  i.  107,  117.  Correct  this  by  Eaine,  i.  44.  Hook  owns  that,  when 
he  went  about  Northumbria,  'the  Spirit  of  God  blessed  the  preached 
word;'  p.  112. 

^  Bede,  ii.  9  :  '  Ipse  potius  toto  animo  intendens.' 

*  Lindsey  occurs  in  Bede,  Praef. ;  ii.  16;  iii.  11,  27;  iv.  3,  12.  Its 
name  is  obviously  derived  from  Lindum;  see  Green,  Making  of  Engl, 
p.  58.  It  was  then  subject  to  Noi*thumbria,  but  was  soon  annexed  to 
Mercia.  This  ancient  connexion  of  Lincolnshire  with  York  led  arch- 
bishop Thomas  I  of  York  to  claim  jurisdiction  over  it  when  a  Mercian 
bishopric  had  been  removed  to  Lincoln  :  but  the  claim  was  overruled, 
Raine,  Fast.  Ebor.  p.  150. 

^  Bede,  ii.  16.  See  Freeman,  iv.  212  ;  Engl.  Towns  and  Districts,  pp. 
199-201. 

•  On  the  burgh-reeve  see  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  106  (or  93). 


140  Paulinus  at  Lincoln. 

CHAP.  IV.  a  convert,  and  began  to  build  '  a  stone  church  of  noble 
workmanship,'  the  roofless  walls  of  which  were  standing 
in  Bede's  own  day.  In  this  church,  represented  now  by 
one  that  is  corruptly  named  St.  PauUs,  and  stands  at  some 
distance  to  the  north-west  of  the  cathedral  on  the  platform 
of  that  'sovereign  hilP/an  important  ceremony  took  place, 
probably  at  some  time  in  628^.  Justus  had  died  in  the 
preceding  November  ^,  his  last  days  cheered  by  the  happy 
tidings  from  the  North.  His  successor-elect  was  Honorius, 
whom  Bede  calls  one  of  the  '  disciples  of  Pope  Gregory  ^ ' — 
a  phrase  which  naturally  means  that  he  belonged  in  some 
sense  to  the  same  class  as  Augustine  and  his  three 
successors,  as  having  personally  received  instruction  from 
the  great  Pope,  so  that  he  was,  as  Bede  further  tells  us, 
*a  man  who  had  received  the  highest  training  in  things 
ecclesiastical^.'  But  who  was  to  consecrate  Honorius? 
Romanus  of  Rochester,  sent  by  Justus  on  Church  business 
to  Rome,  had  met  with  the  same  death  by  drowning,  in 
the  Mediterranean^,  as  befell  the  abbot  Peter  of  Canter- 
He  conse-  bury  in  the  British  Channel.  To  Paulinus,  therefore,  as 
the  only  English  bishop,  Honorius  repaired:  they  met  at 
Lincoln,  and  here  the  fifth  archbishop  of  Canterbury  was 
consecrated  by  the  sole  ministry  of  the  first  of  a  new  line 
Baptisms  of  bishops  of  York.  It  may  here  be  mentioned  that  at 
some  time  during  his  episcopate,  Paulinus,  accompanied 
by  Edwin,  visited  Nottinghamshire,  and  baptized  a  multi- 
tude of  people,  at  midday,  in  the  Trent,  near  a  town  whose 
uncouth  Saxon  name  of  '  Tiovulfingacsestir '^,'  or  castle  of 

*  Wordsworth.     '  Urbs  situ  splendida,'  Hen.  Hunt. 
^  So  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  73,  82.     We  want  twenty-two  years  for 

two  East-Anglian  episcopates,  the  first  of  which  began  some  time  after 
Honorius'  consecration,  while  the  third  began  before  his  death,  which 
took  place  in  653.  His  consecration,  therefore,  must  be  prior  to  630,  and 
may  probably  be  dated  in  628. 

^  Nov.  10 ;  Bede,  ii.  18.  For  the  date  of  627,  see  Chronicle.  It  is 
interesting  to  find  his  name  preserved  in  the  remote  Cornish  village  of 
St.  Just-in-Penwith.     See  Gilbert's  Paroch.  Hist,  of  Cornwall,  ii.  282. 

*  Bede,  ii.  20 ;  v.  19,  20 ;  Hist.  Abb.  3. 

*  Bede,  v.  19.  He  may  have  been  one  of  Gregory's  choir-boys ;  Hook, 
i.  112. 

^  Bede,  ii.  20.  '  Bede,  ii,  16.     See  above,  p.  128. 


crates 
Honorius 


in  the 
Trent. 


Christianity  in  East-Anglia.  141 

the  Tiovulfing  family,  has  otherwise  entirely  perished,  but  chap.  iv. 
which  may  be  conjecturally  identified  with  Littleborough, 
where  the  river  was  crossed  by  the  Roman  road  from 
Lincoln  northwards  \  It  seems  also  that  he  visited  the 
southern  Cumbria,  and  left  a  tradition  of  his  having 
preached  and  officiated  at  Whalley  ^. 

His  royal  convert  was  also  active  in  extending  Christianity  Conver- 
beyond  the  Northumbrian  border.  Edwin's  old  protector,  -g^g^. 
Redwald  of  East-Anglia,  had  been  succeeded  by  a  son  Anglia. 
named  Eorpwald ;  and  Edwin  made  the  best  return  for  old 
kindness  by  'persuading  Eorpwald,  with  his  province,  to 
embrace  the  faith  ^.'  This  conversion,  traceable  through 
Edwin  to  Paulinus,  and  so  to  the  '  Gregorian  mission,'  may 
probably  be  assigned  to  the  year  628"^.  But  the  Pagan 
antipathy  of  the  East-Anglian  nobles,  which  had  con- 
tributed to  produce  the  '  Samaritan '  policy  of  Redwald, 
was  fiercely  aroused  against  a  new  king  who  was  far  more 
resolute  in  his  new  religion.  One  of  these  men,  named 
Ricbert,  inflicted  on  him  a  death  which  was  virtually 
a  martyrdom,  in  the  very  year  of  his  conversion.  For 
three  years  afterwards,  East-Anglia  was  again  for  the 
most  part  '  heathen '  ^ ;  and  Edwin  must  have  grieved  over 

^  I  am  indebted  for  this  suggestion  to  Mr.  James  Parker,  who  has 
pointed  out  that  Littleborough  is  the  Segelocum  of  Antoninus'  fifth  Iter, 
and  was  a  station  between  Lindum  and  Danum,  so  that  Paulinus,  coming 
to,  or  returning  from  Lindum,  would  naturally  cross  the  Trent  there, 
Torksey,  to  the  south,  on  the  Lincolnshire  side,  has  also  been  thought 
of,  but  it  was  not  on  that  road.  Southwell  would  hardly  have  been 
proposed  but  for  the  local  tradition  that  its  venerable  church,  now 
a  cathedral,  was  originally  founded  by  Paulinus, — a  tradition  which 
probably  grew  out  of  the  fact  that  from  Saxon  times  St.  Mary's  of 
Southwell  was  subject  to  St.  Peter's  of  York, 

*  Raine,  i.  42 ;  Whitaker,  Hist,  of  Whalley,  p.  33. 

'  Bede,  ii.  15.     This,  then,  was  a  fruit  of  Paulinus'  mission. 

*  There  is  a  difficulty  here  as  to  dates.  The  Chronicle  dates  Eorpwald's 
baptism  in  632,  and  the  coming  of  Felix  in  636.  So  Florence  of  Worcester. 
But  (see  above)  by  tracing  back  twenty-two  years  before  the  year  653,  in 
which  Honorius  died,  we  reach  631  at  latest  for  the  coming  of  Felix 
(which  followed  the  accession  of  Sigebert),  and  must  go  back  some  three 
years  further  for  Eorpwald's  baptism  and  death  which  Haddan  and 
Stubbs  place  in  628  (iii.  89). 

*  Not  wholly  :  it  was  the  '  whole  province '  which  Sigebert  took  pains 
to  make  Christian,  Bede,  ii.  15  :  cp.  iii.  3,  as  to  Northumbria. 


142  Sigebert  and  Felix. 

CHAP.  IV.  this  failure  of  his  efforts  in  behalf  of  the  land  where  he 
had  once  found  refuge.  But  again,  unexpectedly,  '  the  day 
Sigebert  broke.'  Eorpwald's  half-brother  \  Sigebert,  had  formerly 
Learned.  ^^^^  driven  by  his  step-father  Redwald  into  Gaul.  The 
family  quarrel  and  the  exile  were  overruled  for  good  of 
the  truest  kind.  During  his  sojourn  among  the  Franks, 
Sigebert  was  *  instructed  in  the  mysteries  of  the  faith,' 
and  moreover,  in  some  of  the  Church  schools  of  the  country^, 
acquired  whatever  learning  they  could  impart,  and  a 
genuine  intelligent  sense  of  its  value.  He  now  returned 
to  be  king  of  the  East- Anglians :  and  as  a  man  '  thoroughly 
Christian  and  very  learned,  a  good  man  and  religious,' — so 
Bede  sketches  his  character^, — he  made  it  his  first  object 
to  carry  out  the  work  which  his  brother  had  begun  at  the 
cost  of  his  life :  and  just  then,  by  one  of  these  coincidences 
which  betoken  a  far-reaching  providential '  order,  there 
arrived  at  Canterbury  a  bishop  named  Felix,  from  that 
Burgundian  territory,  bounded  by  the  Rhone  and  Saone 
and   the   Alps*,   which   had   now    for   nearly    a    century 

^  Florence,  Append. :  '  Frater  ex  parte  matris.'  For  him  see  Bede, 
ii.  15  ;  iii.  18. 

^  The  ancient  fame  of  the  Gallo-Koman  schools,  as  of  Lyons,  Autun, 
Marseilles,  had  been  to  some  extent  revived  by  the  Prankish  ecclesiastical 
and  monastic  schools,  in  which  the  literature  of  the  age  was  studied 
together  with  theology,  as  at  Vienne,  where  Bishop  Desiderius,  to  the 
disgust  of  Gregory  the  Great,  gave  lessons  in  'grammar,'  i.e.  profane 
literature,  and  also  at  Treves,  Troyes,  and  Poitiers,  where  youths  were 
trained  in  '  liberal '  and  *  secular  *  studies  of  all  kinds.  See  Smith's 
Bede,  p.  723.  Guizot,  Civil,  in  Fr.  lect.  16,  mentions  as  the  most 
flourishing  cathedral  schools  in  France,  from  the  sixth  to  the  middle  of 
the  eighth  century,  those  of  Poitiers,  Paris,  Le  Mans,  Bourges,  Clermont, 
Vienne,  Chalons,  Aries,  Gap.  These  schools,  he  says,  superseded  the 
great  civil  schools.  Monastic  schools  were  also  numerous.  Sigebert  was 
in  Gaul  during  the  brilliant  opening  of  the  reign  of  Dagobert  I  as  sole 
king  of  the  Franks;  see  Fredegar,  Chr.  58. 

2  Bede,  ii.  15  ;  iii.  18. 

*  See  Freeman,  Hist.  Essays,  pp.  172,  201 ;  Gibbon,  iv.  356.  The  name 
was  derived  from  the  burgs  or  castles  built  by  this  race ;  Fredegar, 
Fragm.  2.  Clovis  took  his  wife  Clotilda  from  Burgundy ;  his  sons 
conquered  it  in  534  ;  Greg.  Tur.  Hist.  Fr.  iii.  11.  It  accepted  the 
Catholic  faith,  having  been  previously  Arian,  and  became  one  of  the 
Merovingian  kingdoms  ;  but  in  628  it  was  united  to  the  others  under 
Dagobert  I.  See  Kitchin,  Hist.  Fr.  i.  59,  85  ;  Guizot,  Hist.  Fr.  i.  c.  7  ; 
Church,  Beginning  of  M.  Ages,  p.  18. 


Episcopate  of  Felix,  143 

been  subject  to  the  Franks.  Felix  had  been  strongly  chap.  iv. 
moved  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  English  heathens,  and  ^piix 
Honorius,  after  hearing  his  wish,  recommended  him  to  go  Dunwich. 
into  East-Anglia.  Sigebert  at  once  recognized  him  as  the 
very  man  he  needed  for  his  object.  King  and  bishop 
accepted  each  other :  Felix,  settled  at  Dunwich,  then  a  city 
on  the  Suffolk  coast,  now  annihilated  by  the  ocean  ^.  began 
in  631  an  episcopate  of  seventeen  years,  so  full  of  'happi- 
ness '  for  the  cause  of  Christianity  that  Bede  might  well 
describe  his  work  with  an  allusion  to  the  good  omen  of 
his  name  2.  '  He  delivered  all  that  province,'  adds  Bede, 
'  from  longstanding  unrighteousness  and  infelicity  : '  as  '  a 
pious  cultivator  of  the  spiritual  field,'  he  '  found  abundant 
fruit  in  a  believing  people : '  and  an  important  feature 
of  this  mission,  as  it  was  of  the  Kentish,  was  the  com- 
bination of  education  with  religion  by  means  of  a  school 
such  as  Sigebert  had  seen  abroad,  and  as  by  this  time 
existed  at  Canterbury  in  connexion  with  the  house  of 
SS.  Peter  and  Paul.  This  school,  for  which  Felix  provided 
teachers  '  after  the  model  of  Kent,'  was  probably  attached 
to  the  primitive  East- Anglian  cathedral^.  It  must  have 
been  about  two  years  after  the  coming  of  Felix  that 
Sigebert  'honourably  received*'  an  Irish  monk  famous 
for  learning  and  holiness,  named  Fursey  (or,  more  properly, 

^  Under  the  Conqueror,  Dunwich,  though  it  had  long  ceased  to  be  an 
episcopal  city,  had  236  burgesses  and  100  poor  ;  and  it  was  prosperous 
under  Henry  III.  Spelman  heard  that  it  was  reported  to  have  had 
fifty  churches.  When  Camden  published  his  *  Britannia '  (vol.  i.  p,  448) 
in  1607,  it  lay  *  in  solitude  and  desolation,'  the  greater  part  being 
submerged  by  the  effect  of  the  sea  on  the  soft  cliff  on  which  it  stood. 
One  local  tradition  places  the  first  preaching  of  Felix  at  Saham. 

*  'Sacramentum  sui  nominis.'  So  in  Bede's  Life  of  St.  Felix  of  Nola, 
c.  I.  '  Felix,  nominis  sui  mysterium  factis  exsequens.*  This  most 
successful  mission  was  in  direct  connexion  with  the  (often  disparaged) 
Gregorian  mission  at  Canterbury.  Bede  says  that  Honorius  '  misit  eum,' 
ii.  15.  The  date  631  for  his  coming  seems  on  the  whole  more  probable 
because  more  consistent  with  earlier  time-marks  than  630. 

^  See  Churton,  p.  63.  Smith,  as  against  '•  Oxonian '  zealots,  argues 
that  this  school  might  have  been  at  Cambridge,  but  concludes  that,  if  it 
was  not,  it  was  most  probably  at  Dunwich,  or  else  at  Saham ;  App.  to 
Bede,  No.  14. 

*  Bede,  iii.  19.     For  St.  Fursa's  life  see  Lanigan,  ii.  449. 


144  Fursey  in  East-Anglia. 

Fursa),  who  had  come  over  with  two  brothers  of  his,  and 
two  priests',  into  East-Anglia,  and  there  'taking  up  his 
accustomed  work  of  preaching  the  Gospel,  did  much,  by 
example  and  by  exhortation  for  the  conversion  of  un- 
believers, and  the  confirmation  of  believers  in  faith  and 
love.'  Receiving  a  piece  of  ground  within  a  *  camp '  called 
Cnobheresburg,  previously  Garianonum,  now  Burgh-castle, 
in  Suffolk,  which  still  exhibits  huge  masses  of  Roman 
fortress-work^,  he  built  what  Bede  calls  a  '  noble  monastery,' 
where  he  used  to  tell  how,  years  before,  during  his  early 
life  in  Ireland,  he  had  seemed,  in  a  trance,  to  see  visions 
of  the  punishments  of  the  wicked  in  the  other  world  ^,  such 
as  the  weird  imagination  of  the  author  of  the  '  Apocalypse 
of  Peter'  and  his  imitators,  fed  rather  from  Pagan  than 
from  Jewish  or  Christian  sources,  had  popularized  among  the 
simpler  Christians  of  the  early  period ;  such,  also,  as  were 
reproduced  after  Fursey 's  time  in  the  dream  of  Drythelm 
of  Melrose  ^,  and  in  the  stor^^  told  by  the  monk  of  Wenlock 
to  St.  Boniface  ^ ;  such,  again,  as  received  their  fullest 
development  in  the  sterner  parts  of  the  '  Divine  Comedy.' 
It  was  probably  under  Fursey 's  influence  that  Sigebert  ere 
long  set  the  bad  precedent  of  abandoning  his  royal  duties 
while  in  full  vigour  of  life,  and  retiring  into  a  cell  which 
he  had  made  for  himself,  and  in  which,  according  to  Bede's 

*  His  brothers  Fullan  and  Ultan  (of  whom  the  latter  lived  as  a  hermit 
in  East-Anglia),  and  two  priests,  Gobban  and  Dicul.  For  the  other 
Dicul  of  Bosham,  see  Bede,  iv.  13, 

^  'Rock-rampart  huge,  work  worthy  Roman  hands, 

Indurate  flint  and  brick  in  ruddy  tiers,'  &c. 

Palgrave,  Visions  of  England,  p.  20. 
It  is  five  miles  from  Yarmouth ;  the  walls  enclose  a  large  area,  640  feet 
long  and  370  broad.     It  was  the  station  of  a  'praepositus  equitum.* 

'  When  Bede  wrote,  an  old  monk  was  still  living  at  Jarrow,  who 
had  heard  from  a  *  very  veracious '  monk  that  he  had  heard  Fursey,  in 
East-Anglia,  tell  his  marvellous  tale,  and  that  w-hile  he  told  it,  though 
it  was  in  a  hard  frost  and  he  was  sitting  in  a  thin  garment,  '  quasi  in 
media  aestatis  caumate  sudaverit.'  Fursey  died  in  Gaul,  in  654.  On  the 
severe  asceticism  of  the  Irish  saints,  see  Whitley  Stokes,  Tripartite  Life, 
Introd.  p.  cxcv. 

*  Bede,  v.  12.  See  Card.  Newman's  Verses  on  Various  Occasions,  p.  201. 
Compare  Gregory's  Dialogues,  iv.  36. 

'"  Bonif.  Ep.  20. 


Cadwallon  and  Penda,  145 

estimate,  he  might  '  play  the  soldier  rather  for  the  sake  of  chap.  iv. 
a  heavenly  kingdom  ^.' 

But  while  the  Church  was  being  quietly  built  up  in 
East-Anglia,  it  was  on  the  verge  of  a  terrible  catastrophe 
in  the  North.  Cadwallon,  or  Cadwalla,  king  of  Gwynedd  ^ 
or  North  Wales,  had,  some  years  before,  invaded  Northum- 
bria,  in  requital  of  the '  devastating '  fury  of  Ethelf rid.  Edwin 
had  defeated  him  near  Morpeth,  driven  him  into  Wales, 
fought  battles  with  him,  and  besieged  him  in  the  isle  of 
Priestholm  ^  near  Anglesey.  He  found  refuge  in  Ireland, 
and  thence  returned,  and  in  his  thirst  for  vengeance  allied 
himself,  Briton  and  Christian  as  he  was,  with  a  Saxon 
prince  who  combined  in  his  own  person  the  fiercest  energy 
of  a  Teuton  warrior  with  the  sternest  resistance  to  the 
progress  of  the  new  creed :  who,  succeeding  to  power  at 
fifty  years  old  *,  was  for  thirty  years  the  prop  and  the 
sword  of  Heathenism,  and  also  came  near  to  reducing  the 
various  kingdoms  to  a  monarchy  centred  in  the  youngest 
of  them  alP.  This  was  Penda,  'the  strenuous^'  king  of 
the  Mercians, '  the  first  ruler  of  the  united  Midland  kingdom,' 
whose  name  was  long  a  terror  to  the  inmates  of  cell  and 
minster  in  every  Christianized  district.  There  is  a  sort  of 
weird  grandeur  in  the  career  of  one  who  in  his  time  slew 
five  kings,  and  might  seem  as  irresistible  as  destiny.     He 

*  Bede,  iii.  i8  :  perhaps  at  Bury  St.  Edmunds.  The  example  was  fol- 
lowed by  Kenred  of  Mercia  and  Offa  of  Essex,  and  others  not  in  their 
prime,  as  Ceolwulf  and  Ethelred. 

2  'Catgublaun,  king  of  Guenedotia,*  App.  Nenn.  ;  Catguollaaun,  al. 
Catwallaun,  Ann.  Camb.  p.  7,  Rolls  Series.  He  was  son  of  Cadvan 
(Angl.  Sac,  ii.  p.  xxxii)  ;  see  above,  p.  121.     Rhys,  Celt.  Brit.  p.  128. 

3  Ann.  Camb.  a.  629,  calling  the  island  Glannauc.  In  Giraldus'  time 
it  was  inhabited  by  hermits,  Itin.  Camb.  ii.  7.  See  Rhys,  Celt.  Brit, 
p.  131.  'The  British  Triads  characterize  Edwin  as  one  of  the  three 
plagues  which  befell  the  isle  of  Anglesey ; '  Turner,  i.  364.  Reginald, 
Vit.  S.  Osw.  c.  9,  says  that  Edwin  chased  '  Cadwallon  into  Armorica ' : 
this  seems  to  be  a  confusion  with  the  fictitious  retirement  of  his  son 
Cadwalader  into  Armorica  ;  see  Ann.  Camb.  p.  8. 

*  So  the  Chronicle,  a.  626. 

*  Freeman,  i.  36 ;  Lappenberg,  i.  164. 

*  So  Hen,  Hunt,  calls  him,  from  Bede's  'viro  strenuissimo,*  ii,  2d,  and 
adapts  Lucan,  Phars.  ii.  439, 

*  Nullas  nisi  sanguine  fuso 
Gaudet  habere  vias.' 


146 


Edwin  slain  at  Hatfield. 


CHAP.  IV. 


Battle  of 
Hatfield. 


Devasta- 
tion of 
Northum- 
bria. 


had  begun  to  reign  in  626,  on  the  death  of  Edwin's  father- 
in-law  Ceorl :  in  628  he  had  encountered  at  Cirencester  the 
West-Saxon  king  Kynegils  with  his  son  and  sub-king 
Cwichelm  (the  prince  who  had  sought  Edwin's  life),  and 
after  a  day  of  exhausting  but  indecisive  conflict,  had  made 
a  treaty  with  them,  implying  a  cession  of  West-Saxon 
land  ^ :  and  now,  in  order  to  humble  Northumbria,  he 
joined  forces  with  Cadwallon,  and  attacked  Edwin  at 
Heathfield  or  Hatfield  ^  in  south-east  Yorkshire,  on  the 
12th  of  October,  633.  Here  ended  the  glorious  course  of 
the  great  Edwin.  After  seeing  his  son  Osfrid  fall  ^,  he 
was  himself  slain,  and '  his  whole  army  destroyed  or  dis- 
persed *.'  The  victorious  confederates  made  '  a  very  great 
slaughter  throughout  the  church  and  nation  of  the  North- 
umbrians,' one  of  them,  as  Bede  remarks,  being  a  Pagan, 
and  the  other,  because  a  barbarian  (i.  e.  a  Briton),  '  more 
cruel  than  a  Pagan.'  The  Mercians  burned  the  royal 
mansion  and  church  at '  Campodonum ' :  but  its  altar,  being 
of  stone,  escaped  the  fire,  and  was  preserved  in  Bede's  time 
at  a  monastery  in  the  wood  of  Elmet  ^.  But  it  is  of  the 
Welsh  king  that  we  read,  'He  spared  neither  women  nor 
children,  but  put  them  to  torturing  deaths,  raging  for  a 
long  time  through  all  the  country,  and  resolving  that  he 
would  be  the  man  to  exterminate  the  whole  English  race 
within  the  bounds  of  Britain  ^ :  nor  did  he,  though  a  Chris- 

^  Chron.  a.  628;  Hen.  Hunt.  ii.  31  ;  Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  267. 
Wessex  was  just  then  weak,  after  Edwin's  invasion. 

^  See  Hunter's  Deanery  of  Doncaster,  i.  152.  The  scene  of  the  battle 
was  probably  west  of  Hatfield  church.  The  country  is  flat  for  miles,  and 
in  those  days  was  a  fen.  The  Welsh  called  the  place  Meiceren,  or 
Meicen;  Ann.  Camb.  and  Nennius.  Alb.  Butler  places  'St.  Edwin,  king 
and  martyr,*  on  Oct.  4. 

^  '  Juvenis  bellicosus,*  son  of  Cwenburga,  and  father  of  the  child  YfiS. 
His  brothet  Eadfrid  threw  himself  on  Penda's  mercy,  and  was  afterwards 
put  to  death  by  him  '  in  spite  of  his  oath.'  But  Bede,  ii.  20,  does  not  say 
that  this  was  done  'at  the  pressure  of  Oswald,'  Green,  p.  291. 

*  Bede,  ii.  20.  The  Annales  Cambriae  patriotically  ignore  Penda,  and 
ascribe  the  victory  to  '  Catguollaaun.' 

^  Bede,  ii,  14.  This  monastery  of  abbot  Thrydwulf  was  'probably  on 
the  site  of  the  existing  parish  church  of  Leeds ' ;  Murray's  Yorkshire, 
P-  345. 

*  'Erasurum  se  esse.'  So  iii.  i,  'tragica  caede  dilaceraret,*  &c.  His 
idea  was  to  purge  '  Lloegra,'  our  present  England,  of  its  foreign  invaders. 


The  'Hateful  Year.'  147 

tian  in  profession,  show  any  respect  to  the  Christian  chap.  iv. 
religion  which  had  grown  up  among  them  ^'  However, 
two  princes  of  the  Northumbrian  line  secured  for  a  while 
a  precarious  and  shameful  royalty:  Edwin's  cousin  Osric^  Eanfrid 
was  regarded  as  king  in  Deira ;  and  the  sons  of  Ethelf rid 
returned  from  their  exile,  and  the  eldest,  Eanfrid,  became 
king  in  Bernicia.  Both  kings  had  been  baptized,  the 
former  by  Paulinus  '•\  the  latter  among  the  '  Scots  * ' :  but 
both,  in  order  to  gain  Penda's  favour,  and  the  support  of 
those  Northumbrians  who  clung  to  Paganism,  disowned 
their  Christian  belief  ^ :  and  both  were  slain  by  the  Chris- 
tian Cadwallon.  Osric,  while  'rashly'  besieging  the  Britons 
in  York^  during  the  summer  of  634,  was  cut  off  by  an 
unexpected  sally:  and  in  the  autumn,  Eanfrid,  with  still 
greater  folly,  came  to  Cadwallon  '  to  sue  for  peace,  and 
met  with  a  similar  doom.'  Flushed  with  these  successes, 
Cadwallon  vaunted  himself  as  irresistible  ^,  and  ravaged 
Northumbria  'not  like  a  conquering  king,  but  like  a 
raging  tyrant.'  This  year  which  followed  the  battle  of 
Hatfield  was  even  in  Bede's  time  '  hateful  to  all  good  men^.' 
It  was  the  year  of  foreign  tyranny,  exercised  by  a  fierce 
conqueror  who  deemed  himself  irresistible ;  it  was  also  the 

Lloegrians  originally  meant  a  supposed  invading  force  from  Gaul :  they 
were  said  to  have  united  with  the  Saxons.  Elton,  Origins  of  Engl.  Hist, 
p.  12. 

^  Bede  adds  that  even  in  his  own  day  the  Britons  were  wont  to  regard 
English  Christianity  as  no  better  than  Paganism.     See  above,  p.  112. 

"^  Son  of  Elfric  the  brother  of  Ella,  and  father  of  St.  Oswin. 

^  Bede,  iii.  i. 

*  Eanfrid  had  become,  during  his  exile,  the  father  of  Talorgan,  after- 
wards king  of  the  Picts  ;  Robertson,  Scotl.  under  Early  Kings,  i.  12; 
ii.  185.  This,  together  with  Bede's  phrase,  'apud  Scottos  sive  Pictos' 
(iii.  i),  and  with  the  legend  of  Columba's  appearance  to  Oswald  before 
his  victory,  would  favour  the  current  opinion  that  he  had  taken  refuge  in 
Dalriada,  not,  as  Lanigan  thinks,  in  Northern  Ireland  (^i.  418).  See  also 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  106. 

^  '  Anathematizando  prodidit'  is  Bede's  phrase. 

®  *In   oppido  municipio;'    Bede   means   York.     Roman  York  was   a 
'colonia.'     See  Raine's  ^  York'  (Historic  Towns),  p.  11. 
'  Bede,  iii.  i :  'Copiis  quibus  nihil  resistere  posse  jactabat.' 

*  Bede,  iii.  1 :  '  Infaustus  .  .  .  exosus  usque  hodie  permanet.'  It  was 
not  reckoned  by  the  reigns  of  the  two  apostates,  but  of  their  saintly 
successor.  Cp.  iii.  9,  'adnumerato  etiam  illo  anno,  quem  feralis  impietas 
.  .  .  et  apostasia  .  . .  detestabilem  fecerunt.* 

L  1 


148 


Flight  of  Paultnus. 


CHAP.  IV.  year  of  two  kings'  apostasy,  and,  it  must  be  added,  the  year 
in  which  the  Northumbrian  Church  was  abandoned  by  its 
chief  pastor.  Paulinus  may  well  have  been  bowed  down 
by  the  shock  of  seeing  Edwin's  head  brought  to  York  ^,  and 
of  knowing  the  misery  which  had  come  on  the  whole 
kingdom.  He  thought  that  it  was  a  case  for  '  flying  from 
persecution ' ;  and  this,  as  it  would  seem,  without  any  such 
sufficiency  of  clergy  in  the  bishop's  absence,  as,  in  St.  Augus- 
tine's carefully  formed  opinion,  would  alone  justify  a  chief 
pastor's  flight  ^.  But  he  persuaded  himself  that  he  had 
a  primary  duty  to  the  widowed  queen  whom  he  had 
escorted  to  Northumbria,  althougfh  a  brave  thane  ^  named 
Bass  was  at  hand  to  guard  her  return.  He  set  sail  with 
her,  and  with  her  younger  son  and  daughter,  Wuscf rea  and 
Eanfled,  and  Yffi,  the  infant  son  of  her  stepson  Osf rid  * : 
*  he  took  with  him  a  large  golden  cross  ^,  and  a  golden 
chalice  hallowed  for  the  service  of  the  altar  ^,'  which  were 
long  shown  in  the  church  of  Canterbury ;  and  the  fugitive 
party,  under  the  care  of  Bass,  arrived  safely  in  Kent,  where 
Paulinus  accepted  from  Honorius  and  Eadbald  the  long 
vacant  see  of  Rochester.  It  was  not  till  the  following 
autumn  that  he  received  a  pall,  intended  for  him  as 
archbishop  of  York  "^ ;  it  came  too  late  for  him,  but  with 
a  similar  one  for  archbishop  Honorius  from  his  namesake, 


Flight  of 
Paulinus. 


*  Bede,  ii.  20  :  '  Adlatum  est  autem  caput,'  &c.  The  body  was  also  re- 
covered, and  afterwards  buried  at  Whitby ;  iii.  24. 

^  S.  Aug.  Ep.  228.  See  Fleury,  b.  25.  c.  25 ;  Newman,  Ch.  of  the 
Fathers,  p.  238.  Augustine  also  allowed  a  bishop  to  fly  if  his  flock  fled, 
or  if  he  had  no  flock  left.  Maluiesbury  describes  Paulinus  as  expelled 
from  his  see  by  foes ;  Gest.  Pont.  i.  72,  p.  134  (^ Rolls  Series). 

^  He  is  called  '  miles.'     See  above,  p.  129, 

*  He  and  Wuscfrea  were  afterwards,  says  Bede,  sent  by  Ethelburga,  for 
fear  of  her  brother  Eadbald  and  of  Oswald,  to  the  court  of  her  friend  the 
Prankish  king,  Dagobej-t,  where  they  died  in  their  childhood. 

^  St.  Willibrord  used  to  carry  with  him  on  his" journeys  a  golden  cross  ; 
Vit.  30. 

"  See  the  prayer  *  ad  calicem  benedicendum  '  in  St.  Gregory's  Sacra- 
mentary;  Murat.  Lit.  Rom.  ii.  186,  and  Egbert's  Pontif.  p.  48. 

'  So  that  he  was  never  really  archbishop.  Egbert,  who  was  bishop  of 
York  in  Bede's  last  days,  became  the  first  archbishop  in  735.  Wilfrid 
has  often  been  called  *  archbishop,'  but  quite  erroneously :  so  too  Bede's 
epitaph  in  Durham  cathedral  gives  the  title  to  St.  John  of  Beverley. 


IVas  his  work  a  failure  ?  149 

the  first  Pope  of  that  name,  whose  letter  to  the  archbishop  chap.  it. 
of  Canterbury,  evidently  the  duplicate  of  one  addressed  to 
Paulinus,  and  dated  on  June  11,  634,  empowered  the  sur- 
viving metropolitan  in  case  of  a  vacancy  to  consecrate 
a  successor,  '  so  that  their  churches  might  suffer  no  loss  ^ 
through  the  necessity  of  a  long  journey.'  Another  letter 
then  received  must  have  been  read  with  mournful  interest : 
it  exhorted  the  Pope's  *  most  excellent  son,  Edwin  king  of 
the  Angles,'  to  persevere  in  the  pious  course  which  he  had 
begun  -.  We  may  here  observe  that  when  Paulinus  settled 
down  to  his  tranquil  work  at  Rochester,  Ethelburga  founded 
a  convent  at  Lyminge,  where  to  the  west  of  the  existing 
church,  which  contains  much  Roman  brick-work,  are  the 
excavated  remains  of  an  original  '  basilica  of  St.  Mary,' 
belonging  to  the  Roman  period  ^  ;  where  the  place  of  her 
burial  is  marked  by  a  modern  tablet  on  the  south  wall  of 
the  church  *,  and  her  name  of  endearment  is  still  perpetuated 
in  a  neighbouring  common  called  '  Tatta's  Leas  ^.' 

It  has  been  too  much  the  fashion  to  speak  of  the  work  of 
Paulinus  as  utterly  ruined  by  the  catastrophe  of  Hatfield, 
as  if  all  the  impressions  left  by  it  had  in  a  single  year  been 
clean  effaced,  so  that  the  next  missionary  bishop  had 
simply  to  begin  over  again.  This  would  be  antecedently 
very  improbable  ;  and  it  is  contradicted  by  the  language  of 
our  only  real  authority.    The  Northumbrian  Christians  were 

*  Bede,  ii.  i8.  The  pope  here  quietly  assumes  that,  but  for  this  per- 
mission, an  archbishop  elect  would  have  to  travel  to  Rome  for  con- 
secration ;  as  if  he  could  not,  like  Augustine,  seek  it  in  Gaul.  In  the 
same  letter  he  speaks  of  the  '  advance '  made  by  archbishops  on  '  the 
beginnings '  due  to  Gregory.  The  so-called  second  letter  of  Honorius  I  to 
Honorius  is  one  of  the  ten  spurious  documents  which  were  forged  in  the 
interest  of  the  see  of  Canterbury  ;  see  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  65. 

''■  Bede,  ii.  17.  He  advises  Edwin  to  have  the  writings  of  pope  Gregory 
frequently  read  to  him,  and  to  realize  his  own  kingship  by  loyalty  to  the 
Divine  King.  Edwin,  it  seems,  had  asked  for  a  pall  for  Paulinus  as  well 
as  for  Honorius  :  '  Ea  quae  a  nobis  pro  vestris  sacerdotibus,'  &c. 

^  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  38  ;  Murray's  Kent  and  Sussex,  p.  154. 

*  'The  burial-place  of  St.  Ethelburga  the  queen,  foundress  of  this 
church  and  first  abbess  of  Lyminge/ 

^  I  owe  this  information  to  the  kindness  of  the  late  Canon  Jenkins, 
rector  of  Lyminge.  *  St.  Ethelburga's  well '  is  to  the  east  of  the 
church. 


I50 


James  the  Deacon. 


CHAP.  IV. 


cast  down,  but  not  destroyed.'  They  had  lost  their  bishop, 
but  they  had  still  with  them  one  who,  though  not  even 
a  priest,  did  a  true  pastor's  work  among  them,  keeping  the 
fire  of  faith  alive  in  those  dark  days,  and,  as  Bede  expresses 
it  ^  '  taking  away  great  spoil  from  the  old  enemy  by  teach- 
Jaraes  the  ing  and  baptizing.'  This  was  James  the  Deacon,  otherwise 
known  as  the  Chanter,  from  his  skill  in  Roman  church 
music  ^  ;  a  really  noble  instance,  in  the  third  rank  of  the 
ministry,  of  courageous  steadfastness  under  exceptional 
trial,  and  simple  fidelity  to  a  sacred  trust.  His  name  was 
attached  in  Bede's  time  to  the  '  township '  near  Catterick, 
which  was  his  centre  of  operations  ^.  It  was  within  Deira, 
but  near  the  Bemician  frontier:  and  after  the  renegade 
kings  of  Deira  and  Bernicia  had  fallen  in  the  summer  and 
autumn,  James  would  hear  with  wonder  and  thankfulness 
that  a  younger  brother  of  Eanfrid  was  preparing,  in  the 
character  of  a  Christian  prince,  to  make  a  stand  for  the 
independence  of  Northumbria.  This  was  he  who  for  ages 
was  honoured  throughout  the  North-country,  and  far 
beyond  it,  as  Saint  Oswald.  When  the  Christians  for 
whom  he  was  to  fight  remembered  that  he  was  the  heir  of 
the  '  fierce '  Pagan  Ethelf rid  *,  they  would  also  hail  him  as 
the  nephew  of  Edwin,  whose  sister  had  been  the  wife  of  her 
Battle  of  brother's  early  foe  ^.  '  With  an  army  small  in  number,  but 
field.  fortified  by  faith  in  Christ,'  he  took  up  his  position  within 


Oswald. 


*  Bede,  ii.  20:  'Reliquerat  autem  in  ecclesia  sua,'  &c.  In  the  same 
context  Bede  goes  on  to  speak  of  Oswald's  reign  as  a  period  in  which 
'the  number  of  the  faithful  increased.' 

^  On  the  ecclesiastical  chant  as  brought  from  Rome,  see  Smith's  Bede, 
p.  719.  We  must  connect  with  James's  name  those  of  Eddi  Stephen, 
John  the  archchanter  (Bede,  iv.  18),  and  Maban  the  chanter  of  Hexham 
(v.  20). 

^  Akeburgh,  a  farm  not  far  from  Catterick, — on  the  site  of  a  village, — 
is  supposed  to  be  '  Jacobsburgh/  See  Churton,  p.  63  ;  Eaine,  i.  44 
(although  the  place  is  not  mentioned  in  Domesday  ;  Murray's  Yorkshire, 
p.  284).  At  the  neighbouring  church  of  Hauxwell  is  a  cross,  on  which 
the  inscription  could  once  be  read,  '  Haec  est  crux  Sti  Gacobi  ; '  Hiibner, 
p.  68. 

*  '  Hie  ut  rosa  de  spinis  eflfloruit ; '  Simeon  of  Durham,  de  Dunelm.  Eccl. 
i.  I  (Op.  i.  18,  Rolls  Series).  He  came  with  twelve  companions ;  Adamnan, 
Vit.  Col.  i.  I. 

*  See  p.  123. 


Battle  of  Heavenfield.  151 

a  few  miles  of  Hagulstad  or  Hexham  \  on  a  rising  ground  ^  chap. 
to  the  north  of  the  Roman  wall  ^,  where  now  stands  the 
humble  chapel  of  '  St.  Oswald's/  commanding  a  wide  view. 
The  time  was  apparently  at  the  close  of  634  *.  The  winter 
morning  had  just  dawned  ^  when  Oswald  caused  a  cross  ^  of 
wood  to  be  hastily  made,  and  a  hole  to  be  dug  for  it  in  the 
earth,  and  held  it  up  with  his  own  hands  while  his  men 
heaped  the  soil  around  it.  Then,  when  the  symbol  of  their 
faith  stood  firmly  fixed,  and  pointing  heavenwards,  he 
raised  his  voice,  and  bade  his  soldiers  kneel  with  him,  and 
'  entreat  the  true  and  living  God,  who  knew  how  just  was 
their  cause,  to  defend  them  from  the  proud  and  fierce 
enemy.'  They  charged  Cadwallon's  greatly  superior  force ; 
and  their  onset  was  overpowering.     Far  away  he  fled,  down 

^  Also  called  Hestaldesige,  Sim.  Hist.  Reg.  c.  58  ;  or  Hestoldesham,  from 
the  brook  Hestild,  Richard  of  Hexh.  in  X  Script,  p.  289. 

2  *  Ad  locum  ejusdem  sanctae  crucis  ascendere  ; '  Bede,  iii.  2. 

^  On  the  great  Roman  'Wall'  from  theTyne  to  the  Sol  way,  see  Burton, 
Hist.  Scotl.  i.  21  ;  Freeman,  Engl.  Towns  and  Districts,  p.  435  ;  Bishop 
Creighton,  'Carlisle,'  (Historic  Towns),  p.  8.  Near  St.  Oswald's  the  track 
of  the  wall  clearly  exhibits  the  northern  foss,  the  line  of  the  stations  and 
forts,  and  the  southern  vallum-line.  A  fragment  of  the  wall,  some  thirty 
yards  long,  stands  not  far  off.  It  is  curious  that  Bede,  i.  12,  post-dates 
this  '  murus  '  by  more  than  two  centuries,  attributing  it  to  the  Romans  in 
the  last  days  of  their  occupancy  of  Britain,  whereas  '  after  a  long  debate 
the  opinion  now  prevails  that  the  wall  and  its  parallel  earthworks,  its 
camps,  roads,  and  stations,  were  designed  and  constructed  by  Hadrian 
alone  ;'  Elton,  Origins  of  Engl.  Hist.  p.  312. 

*  See  Bede,  iii.  i,  2.  There  is  some  difficulty  about  the  date.  Cad- 
wallon,  according  to  Bede,  tyrannized  over  Northumbria  for  an  entire 
year  from  October,  633.  'After  this,'  Osric  having  been  slain  in  the 
summer  of  634,  'at  length  '  Eanfrid  met  a  like  fate.  The  year  from  Oct. 
^33)  t^o  Oct.  634,  was  '  the  year  abhorred,'  afterwards  reckoned  as  a  regnal 
year  of  Oswald.  His  victory  cannot  well  have  taken  place  6e/bre  Decem- 
ber, 634  :  Bede  does  not  say  how  soon  it  followed  on  '  the  slaughter  of  his 
brother  Eanfrid '  ;  iii.  i.  He  reigned  eight  years,  without  counting  the 
*  annus  infaustus '  ;  Bede,  iii.  9  ;  A.-S.  Chr.  a.  634 ;  and  he  was  slain 
August  7,  642  ;  therefore  the  eight  years  must  begin  within  a.  d.  634. 
The  Chron.  dates  his  accession  in  that  jea.v,  but  modern  writers  have 
usually  dated  it  in  635  (e.  g.  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  32). 

'  The  day  before,  Oswald  dreamed  that  Columba  appeared  to  him  and 
promised  him  victory.  This  he  afterwards  told  to  abbot  Seghine  ;  Adamn. 
V.  Col.  i.  I. 

^  This  was  the  only  cross,  as  far  as  Bede  could  learn,  that  had  been  set 
up  in  Bernicia.  He  tells  us  that  splinters  of  it  had  a  healing  virtue  on 
men  and  cattle.     See  Alcuin's  apostrophe  to  it,  de  Pontif.  Ebor.  427. 


152  Oswald^  King  of  Northmnbria, 


Oswald, 
King  of 
Northum- 
bria. 


CHAP.  IT.  the  slope  into  the  valley,  till  he  reached  the  Denisburn,  as 
Bede  calls  it,  probably  a  brook  near  Dilston  ^  eastward 
of  Hexham ;  and  there  he  fell,  amid  carnage  long- 
remembered, — 

The  slaughter  of  Cadwalla's  men 
That  stayed  the  Denis'  flow. 

This  was  the  battle  of  '  Heavenfield  2,'  for  that  significant 
name  had  already  belonged  to  the  place :  the  Welsh  called 
it,  in  their  accounts, '  Catisgual,'  the  battle  below  the  wall  ^. 
Few  fields  of  conflict  should  be  more  interesting  to  English- 
men than  this  which  witnessed  not  only  the  death-blow  to 
Welsh  schemes  of  reconquest,  but  the  definitive  triumph  of 
the  Christian  cause  in  Northumbria.  Heavenfield  had 
fully  made  up  for  Hatfield  :  for  Oswald,  as  not  only  the 
son  of  the  Bernician  Ethelfrid,  but  nephew  of  the  Deiran 
Edwin,  could  '  weld  together  the  two  provinces  into  one 
people,'  and  at  once  became  to  Northumbrian  Christians  all 
that  Edwin  had  been,  and  more :  in  reading  of  him,  we 
think  instinctively  of  Alfred.  Strength  and  sweetness 
were  united  in  a  character  which  almost  represents  the  ideal 

^  *  Caedes  Cedwalensium  Denisi  cursus  coercuit  ; '  ap.  Hen.  Hunt. 
Smith,  p.  720,  supposes  the  Denisburn  to  be  the  Erringburn,  north  of 
St.  Oswald's  and  of  the  Wall,  and  places  the  scene  of  the  battle  in  that 
neighbourhood,  e.  g.  near  Hallington  or  Bingfield.  But  see  Bruce's  Hist, 
of  the  Wall,  p.  142,  that  a  charter  of  the  thirteenth  century  describes 
twenty  acres  of  land  as  between  Denisburn  and  Divelin  (Dilston).  Oswald 
would  cross  the  Wall-line. 

^  Not  so  called  by  '■  after  times  '  (Green,  Making  of  Engl.  p.  275).  Bede 
expressly  says  that  the  name  was  earlier. 

^  Ann.  Camb.  (dating  it  wrongly  in  631)  *  Cantscaul '  ;  App.  Nenn. 
'  Catscaul,  cum  magna  clade  exercitus  sui.'  On  the  death  of  Cadwallon, 
see  Lappenberg,  i.  156.  He  had  fought,  it  was  said,  in  fourteen  battles 
and  sixty  skirmishes :  he  was  succeeded  by  his  son  Cadwalader,  called 
'•  the  Blessed,'  who  died  of  '  the  plague '  in  664  (^Catgualart,  in  App.  to 
Nennius),  or  later  according  to  other  accounts.  See  Rees,  Welsh  Saints, 
p.  301  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  165,  202.  Skene,  on  the  authority  of 
Welsh  records,  would  prolong  Cadwallon's  life  Jto  659,  supposing  his 
father  Cadvan  to  have  been  the  '  Catgublaun '  who  fell  '  in  bello 
Catscaul';  Four  Ancient  Books  of  Wales,  i.  71;  comp.  Reginald,  Vit. 
Osw.  i.  c.  9,  in  Sim.  Op.  i.  345.  But  the  Ann.  Camb.  clearly  identify 
the  victor  of  *  Meiceren '  (Hatfield)  with  him  who  'fell'  in  'Cantscaul'; 
and  Bede's  'infandus  Brettonum  dux,'  who  fell  at  the  Denisburn,  is 
clearly  his  *  rex  Brettonum  Cad  valla.'  '  Catguollaun,'  in  Nennius,  seems 
to  be  only  another  form  of  '  Catgublaun.' 


His  character.  153 

of  Christian  royalty.  He  was  now  about  thirty  years  old  ^  chap.  iv. 
in  the  prime  and  glow  of  a  pure  and  noble  manhood ;  he 
was  granted  to  his  country  in  her  extreme  need  for  some 
eight  years,  in  which  he  signally  '  fulfilled  a  long  time.' 
On  the  one  hand,  so  able  a  captain  and  ruler  that  he 
extended  the  area  of  an  overlord's  supremacy  until  it 
included  not  only  the  *  Britons '  of  Wales  and  '  Strathclyde,' 
but  the  southern  Picts,  and  the  '  Scots '  of  western  Scotland  ^, 
— on  the  other  hand,  as  devout  as  if  he  lived  in  a  cloister, 
thinking  little  of  half  a  night  spent  in  devotion  ^,  and 
accustomed  from  such  habits  to  keep  his  palms  instinctively 
turned  upward,  even  while  sitting  on  his  throne;  thus 
'wont,  while  guiding  a  temporal  kingdom,  to  labour  and 
pray  rather  for  an  eternal  one  ^ ; '  withal,  as  generous  and 
affectionate  as  he  was  pious,  '  kind  and  beneficent  to  the 
poor  and  to  strangers,'  humble  of  mind  and  tender  of  heart, 
amid  all  that  might  have  '  lifted  him  up  to  arrogance  ^,' 
Oswald  was  altogether  a  prince  of  men,  one  bom  to 
attract  a  general  enthusiasm  of  admiration,  reverence,  and 
love. 

His  first  object  was  to  restore  the  national  Christianity ; 
not  to  inaugurate,  but  to  carry  on  the  work  which  the  death 
of  Edwin  had  interrupted ;  as  Bede  expresses  it,  to  bring '  the 
whole  of  the  nation  over  which  he  had  begun  to  reign'  under 

^  Bede,  iii.  9.  Tradition  describes  him  as  tall,  with  a  rather  long  face, 
bright  glancing  eyes,  yellow  hair,  and  a  very  thin  beard ;  Hist.  Transl. 
S.  Cuthb.  6,  in  Bed.  Op.  vi.  409  ;  Reginald,  Yit.  Osw.  c.  50, 

^  Bede,  iii.  6  :  'Denique  omnes  nationes,'  &c.  So  that  Oswald  antici- 
pated the  over-lordship  of  such  a  '  Basileus '  of  Britain  as  Athelstan  or 
Edgar.  See  Freeman,  i.  554.  'Totius  Britanniae  imperator,'  Adamnan, 
i.  I.  Elsewhere  Bede  attributes  this  extension  of  Northumbrian  overlord- 
ship  to  Oswy  ;  ii.  5.     Probably  he  consolidated  it. 

^  Bede,  iii.  12  :  '  Benique  ferunt  quia  a  tempore  matutinae  laudis 
saepius  ad  diem  usque  in  orationibus  perstiterit.'  Comp.  'matutinae 
laudis,*  iv.  7. 

*  Bede,  1.  c.  :  *  Nee  mirandum,*  &c. 

^  Bede,  iii.  6  :  '  Quo  regni  culmine  sublimatus,  nihilominus,  quod 
mirum  est  .  .  .  semper  humilis,'  &c.  See  Alcuin  de  Pontif.  Ebor.  269  : 
*  parens  sibi,  dives  in  omnes,  Excelsus  meritis,  submissus  mente  sed  ipsa.' 
Reginald  says,  '  Neminem  fidelem  esse  pauperem  publice  pertulit,'  c.  10. 
See  the  story  of  the  silver  dish  of  food  at  the  forenoon  meal  of  Easter-day, 
Bede,  iii.  6.  On  Oswald's  character  see  Lightfoot,  Leaders  of  the  Northern 
Church,  p.  33,  that  he  was  at  once  a  true  saint  and  a  true  king. 


154  He  sends  to  Hy  for  a  Bishop. 

CHAP.  IT.  the  influences  of  the  faith  ^ ;  and  for  this,  he  needed  a 
Icolmkiii.  bishop.  He  naturally  applied  to  the  *  elders'  of  that 
Northern  Celtic  Church  which  had  been  for  years  his 
religious  home.  Of  these  elders  the  principal^  were  the 
community  of  Hy  or  Icolmkiii,  where  Seghine  was  then 
ruling,  as  fifth  abbot  ^,  and,  although  only  a  presbyter,  was 
exercising,  by  what  Bede  calls  *  an  unusual  arrangement,' 
a  supreme  jurisdiction  over  all  that  province,  the  bishops 
not  excepted  *.  The  explanation  of  this  anomaly  lay  in  the 
extraordinary  reverence  ^  paid  to  the  great  Founder- Abbot 
and  missionary  saint,  in  whom  the  Church  of  '  Alban '  felt 
herself,  as  it  were,  impersonated,  and  who  was  in  some 
sense  regarded  as  still  living  in  his  successors.  There  were 
in  '  Alban '  no  diocesan  limits  ® ;  the  centre  of  unity  was  the 
monastery  of  Hy,  and  the  idea  of  local  authority  was  con- 
centrated in  its  abbot,  the  'coarb'  or  'heir'  of  'Columbcille*^.' 

^  Bede,  iii.  3.  Cp.  ii.  20,  *  recuperata  .  .  .  pace  in  provincia,  et  crescente 
numero  fidelium  ; '  and  iii.  5,  'fideles,  in  ipsa  eos  fide  confortare '  (Aidan). 

2  Bede's  phrase,  '  majores  natu  Scottorum,'  seems  to  include  others 
besides  the  monks  of  Hy. 

^  Baithen  succeeded  Columba  ;  after  him  came  Laisrean  ;  then  Virgnous 
or  Fergna ;  then,  in  623,  Seghine.  Bede  warmly  praises  the  successors  of 
Columba  for  their  strict,  pure,  and  holy  lives  ;  iii.  4.  For  '  Segenus,'  see 
also  Bede,   ii.   19.      See  a  list  of  abbots  of  Hy  in   Reeves's  Adamnan, 

p.  370  ff- 

*  Bede,  iii.  4  :  '  Cujus  juri  et  omnis  provincia,  et  ipsi  etiam  episcopi, 
ordine  inusitato,  debeant  esse  subjecti,  juxta  exemplum  primi  doctoris  illis, 
qui  non  episcopus,  sed  presbyter  exstitit  et  monachus.'  So  A.-S.  Chr.  a. 
565.     See  Skene,  Celtic  Scotl.  ii.  44. 

^  See  Lanigan,  ii.  249  ff.  ;  Grub,  i.  69,  137  ;  Todd,  Life  of  St.  Patrick, 
p.  10  fif.  The  primacy  passed,  in  effect,  from  Hy  to  Dunkeld,  and  then  to 
Abernethy,  in  the  middle  of  the  ninth  century ;  Reeves's  Adamnan, 
p.  297  ;  Skene,  ii.  307,  310. 

^  See  The  Book  of  Deer,  ed.  Stuart,  pp.  cii,  cxxvi.  The  old  British 
episcopate  was  diocesan,  the  old  Irish  might  rather  be  called  monastic. 
Men  were  often  made  bishops  in  recognition  of  their  learning  or  piety, 
and  employed  to  consecrate  or  to  ordain. 

^  See  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  364  ;  Todd's  St.  Patrick,  p.  156 ;  Book  of 
Deer,  p.  cvii  ;  Skene,  ii.  148  ;  Grub,  Eccl.  Hist.  S<S.  i.  138  ;  Haddan  and 
Stubbs,  ii.  106,  115.  The  Scotic  colony,  in  fact,  was  ruled  by  Irish  church 
customs,  and  in  Ireland  there  was  then,  and  for  centuries  afterwards,  no 
diocesan  system  ;  the  ecclesiastical  centres  were  the  great  tribal  monas- 
teries, and  the  abbots,  revered  as  '  coarbs '  of  the  respective  founders, 
exercised  such  jurisdiction  as  was  possible  in  an  unorganized  Church, 
without  prejudice  to  the  bishop's  exclusive  right  to  perform  certain 
functions. 


Aldan  chosen  Bishop.  155 

From  '  lona/  then,  we  are  told,  a  bishop  ^,  whom  Scotch  chap.  iv. 
tradition   has    called    Gorman,  was    sent    into   Northum- 
bria,  but  his  first  experience  of  its  rude  indocile  heathens 
drove  him  home  again  in  hopeless  disgust  2.     '  It  is  of  no 
use,'  he  told  the  assembled  monks, '  to  attempt  to  convert 
such  people  as  they  are.'     A  voice  was  raised  in  gentle 
remonstrance :    '  Did   you   not,  then,  forget   the  Apostle's 
maxim  .  about  milk   for  babes  ?      Did   you   not   deal   too 
rigidly  with  those  untaught  minds,  and  expect  too  much, 
and  too  soon,  as  the  fruit  of  teaching  too  high  for  them  to 
follow  ^  1 '    All  eyes  were  fixed  on  the  speaker,  a  monk 
named  Aidan  * :  all  said  at  once  that  he  was  the  right  man  ^. 
'  And  so,'  says  Bede,  '  ordaining  him,  they  sent  him  forth  Mission  of 
to  preach  '  to  the  Northumbrians  ;  a  phrase  which,  taken  in  ^orthum- 
connexion  with  the  '  unusual  arrangement,'  has   raised  a  ^"^• 
question  on  which  we  must  for  a  moment  pause.     These 
monks  and  their  abbot  were  simple  presbyters ;  did  they, 
then,   profess   to   '  ordain '   Aidan   as   bishop  ?      We   may 
answer  with  certainty  that  they  did  not.     First,  the  phrase 
'  ordaining '  is  used  elsewhere  for  '  causing  to  be  ordained  ®/ 

^  See  Bede,  iii.  5  :  '  Cum  .  .  .  rex  .  .  .  postulasset  aniistitem  .  .  .  missus 
fuerit  primo  alius,*  &c. 

^  The  community  had  had  two  '  Saxon '  members,  Generous  and  Pilu, 
in  Columlia's  time  ;  Adamn.  iii.  10,  22.  On  this  see  Grub,  i.  60,  that  in 
them,  as  far  as  we  know,  '  Columba  offered  the  first-fruits  of  the  English 
nation  to  God  ;'  and  Lanigan,  ii.  174. 

^  Among  the  many  writers  who  give  this  speech  after  Bede,  see  Bishop 
Lightfoot,  Leaders  of  the  Northern  Church,  p.  43. 

*  We  find  this  name  borne  by  a  monk  of  Hy  in  Columba's  time, 
Adamn.  iii.  6,  and  by  the  Scottish  king  whom  Ethelfrid  defeated,  Bede, 
i.  34.  So  too  Adamnan  speaks  of  Columba's  '  ordaining '  Aidan  to  be 
king,  Vit.  Col.  iii.  5.  This  Aidan  died  in  606.  The  '  Chronicon  Scotorum  ' 
mentions  two  abbots  named  *  Aedhan,'  a.  663,  887. 

'  '  That  he  was  worthy  of  the  episcopate,  because  he  had  in  an  eminent 
degree  the  grace  of  discrimination,  which  is  the  mother  of  virtues;'  i.e. 
he  could  adapt  his  teaching  to  the  capacities  of  various  hearers. 

^  Compare  Greg.  Turon.  H.  F.  iii.  17,  'episcopi  .  .  .  ordinante  Chrote- 
childe  regina  .  .'.  rexerunt  ecclesiam  :'  and  viii.  22,  king  Childebert  II 
had  promised  '  senunquam  ex  laicis  episcopumordinaturum';  and  Rud- 
borne,  Hist.  Maj.  Winton.  c.  3  (Wharton,  Angl.  Sac.  i.  191),  that 
Kenwalch,  king  of  the  West-Saxons,  '  ordinavit  in  episcopum  Agilbertum/ 
So  Marcellinus  and  Faustinus,  that  the  Catholic  people  of  Oxyrinchos 
'episcopum  sibi  per  tunc  temporis  episcopos  catholicos  ordinavit,' 
Sirmond,  Op.  i.  152  :  and  Capit.  Caroli  M.  a.  802,    <  ut  nullus  ex  laicis 


156  Question  as  to  his  consecration, 

CHAP.  IV.  Secondly,  Bede's  language  about  Aidan's  ecclesiastical 
position  shows  that  he,  a  Latin  monk,  accustomed  to 
a  strict  system  of  episcopal  administration,  never  doubted 
that  Aidan  had  validly  'received  the  rank  or  degree  of 
a  bishop  ^ : '  he  speaks  of  him  just  as  he  speaks  of  other 
prelates  indisputably  consecrated;  he  tells  us  that  Aidan 
was  revered  by  archbishop  Honorius  and  by  bishop  Felix  ^. 
Thirdly,  the  very  point  of  the  anomalous  '  arrangement,'  in 
Bede's  view,  is  that  '  even  bishops  '  were  subject  to  the 
abbot  of  Hy ;  and  these  bishops  would  of  course  perform 
the  functions  of  their  order,  such  as  the  consecration  of 
new  bishops  ^.  Fourthly,  Columba  himself  is  recorded  to 
have  honoured  bishops  as  invested  with  peculiar  preroga- 
tives :  on  one  occasion,  when  a  bishop  came  to  Hy,  and 
attempted  in  his  humility  to  pass  himself  off  as  a  simple 
presbyter,  Columba  discovered  his  episcopal  character  when 
they  were  just  about  to  join  in  consecrating  the  Eucharist, 
and  desired  him,  for  the  honour  of  the  episcopate,  to  '  break 
the  bread  alone  in  the  manner  of  a  bishop  ^J     On  the  whole, 

presbiterum  .  .  .  praesumat  ad  ecclesias  suas  ordinare  absque  licentia  .  .  . 
episcopi  sui,'  Pertz,  Monum.  Hist.  Germ.  Leg.  i.  106.  Cp.  Tillemont, 
Mem.  iv.  95,  as  to  Cyprian,  Ep.  52  ;  '  Novatus  .  .  .  diaconum  constituit. ' 
And  Renaudot,  Lit.  Orient,  i.  381,  that  Eutychius  once  uses  *  ordained ' 
for  *  caused  to  be  ordained.'  See  Reeves,  p.  340,  that  the  consecration 
was  performed  by  a  bishop  or  bishops  ^  in  the  name  of  the  community,' 

*  '  Accepto  gradu  episcopatus,'  Bede,  iii.  5.  Moreover,  Bede  calls  him 
a  '  pontifex '  in  iii.  3,  6,  17,  an  'antistes*  in  iii.  14,  15,  16,  17.  See  too 
Bede's  language  about  his  successor  Finan,  iii.  17,  21,  25  ;  and  Cedd  who 
was  consecrated  by  Finan,  'accepto  gradu  episcopatus,'  iii.  22;  and 
Colman  who  'succeeded  Finan  in  the  bishopric,'  iii.  25,  and  'held  the 
pontificate,'  iii.  26.  See  Bp.  Russell,  Hist.  Ch.  Scotl.  i.  32.  Bede  has 
no  doubt  that  those  whom  they  ordained  were  really  '  sacerdotes,'  iii.  5, 
26.     See  Skene,  ii.  157.  ^  Bede,  iii.  25. 

3  More  than  one  bishop,  then, — probably,  according  to  Irish  usage, 
many  more, — dwelt  in  the  '  province  '  of  Alban  ;  Lanigan,  ii.  253.  Reeves 
says  that  there  were  at  all  times  bishops  resident  at  Hy  or  some  dependent 
church,  subject  to  the  abbot's  monastic  jurisdiction  (Adamnan,  p.  340)  ; 
and  see  Skene,  ii.  133,  on  the  bishops  at  Lismore  and  Kingarth. 

*  The  stranger  being  asked  by  Columba  *Christi  Corpus  ex  more  con- 
ficere,'  called  Columba  to  him,  '  ut  simul,  quasi  duo  presbyteri,  Domini- 
cum  panem  frangerent '  (^Maskell,  Mon.  Rit.  iii.  215).  Columba  approached 
the  altar,  looked  in  his  face,  and  said,  '  Benedicat  te  Christus,  frater ; 
hunc  solus  episcopali  ritu  frange  panem  ;  nunc  scimus  quod  sis  episcopus. 
Quare  hucusque  te  occultare  conatus  es,  ut  tibi  a  nobis  debita  non  red- 
deretur  veneratio  ? '    Adamn.  Vit.  Col.  i.  44.     The  stranger  s  name  was 


Aldan  arrives  in  Northumbria,  157 

therefore,  if  there  was  not  at  that  time  a  resident  bishop  in  chap.  iv. 
Hy  ^  as  in  St.  Brigid's  convent  at  Kildare,  in  St.  Martin's 
at  Tours,  and  in  St.  Denis'  near  Paris  2,  we  may  be  sure  that 
the  ministrations  of  one  or  more  of  the  non-diocesan  Scotic 
prelates  would  be  employed  by  abbot  Seghine  when  a 
'  bishop  '  was  to  be  sent  to  king  Oswald. 

So  it  was  that  in  the  summer  of  635  ^  just  ten  years  Arrival  of 
after  Paulinus  came  to  Northumbria,  his  successor  arrived  "  ^  *"* 
from  a  quarter  which  he  himself  would  have  regarded  with 
no  friendly  feeling,— with  something  of  mistrust,  and  even 
of  resentment,  on  account  of  the  obstinacy,  as  he  would  call 
it,  with  which,  in  his  own  experience,  the  Irish  Church, — 
the  mother  Church  of  Columba's  monastery  and  its  de- 
pendencies,— had  rejected  the  '  Catholic '  Easter-rules,  and 
adhered  to  their  own  '  erroneous  observance  *.'  Aidan, 
however,  though  a  true  son  of  his  national  Church  ^,  was 

Cronan,  from  Munster.  Lanigan,  ii.  179,  thinks  that  the  *  episcopalis 
ritus '  was  the  benediction  given  by  bishops  only,  '■  after  the  breaking  of 
the  Host,'  in  Gallican  and  other  Churches.  But  it  was  clearly  the  prero- 
gative of  a  Celtic  bishop  to  consecrate  alone,  whereas  priests  used  to  '  con- 
celebrate,'  or  repeat  the  words  and  acts  of  consecration  together  ;  Warren, 
Lit.  and  Kit.  of  Celt.  Ch.  p.  128,  and  Reeves,  p.  86  (as the  priests  of  '  titles' 
at  Rome  did  with  the  pope,  Duchesne,  Origines  du  Culte,  p.  167).  See 
also  the  story  of  the  ordination  of  Columba,  indicating  *  that  the  distinc- 
tion between  bishops  and  priests  was  well  understood  in  Ireland  ; ' 
Lanigan,  ii.  130  ;  and  that  of  the  ordination  of  Aedh  the  Black,  see  Todd's 
Life  of  St.  Patrick,  p.  8,  and  Reeves,  p.  69.     Cp.  Tripart.  Life,  i.  p.  clxxx. 

^  Lanigan,  ii.  253  ;  Grub,  i.  139. 

2  Lanigan,  ii.  254  ;  Russell,  i.  26  ;  Grant,  Bamp.  Lect.  p.  330  ;  Todd's 
Life  of  St.  Patrick,  pp.  12,  22.  Todd  also  refars  to  the  bishop  of  Aquino 
as  under  the  abbot  of  Monte  Cassino,  and  to  the  position  of  a  bishop  as 
resident  in  the  monastery  of  Mount  Sinai  ;  p.  67.  But  these  cases  are  not 
properly  parallel  to  that  of  Hy  ;  Grub,  i.  137. 

^  Some  time  must  be  allowed  for  (i)  Oswald's  first  request  to  the  Scots, 
(2")  the  unsuccessful  experiment,  (3)  the  second  request.  Aidan  could 
hardly  arrive  before  the  middle  of  635.  He  died  Aug.  31,  651,  after  the 
seventeenth  year  of  his  episcopate  had  begun  ;  see  Bede,  iii.  17.  The 
statement  in  Bede,  iii.  26,  that  the  year  of  the  Whitby  conference,  i.  e. 
664,  was  the  thirtieth  year  of  the  Scotic  mission  in  Northumbria,  may  be 
a  lax  reckoning  from  the  accession  of  Oswald  at  the  end  of  634.  Simeon 
of  Durham  gives  the  date  635  ;  de  Dun.  Eccl.  i.  2  (Op.  i.  19). 

*  See  Bede,  ii.  19,  as  to  Pope  Honorius'  letter  to  the  Irish  :  *  Quos  in 
observatione  sancti  Paschae  errare  compererat.' 

'  *  He  was  son  of  Lugair,  and  of  the  same  lineage  as  St.  Brigid ;'  Reeves's 
Adamnan,  p.  374  ;  see  Bp.  Forbes,  Kalendars,  p.  269. 


158  He  settles  at  Lindisfarne. 

CHAP.  IV.  of  very  different  temper  from  Dagan,  and  even,  on  this 
point,  from  Columban :  and  we  shall  see  that,  although  he 
retained  his  own  usages,  he  disarmed  the  suspicion  or  the 
hostility  which  Celtic  fashions  too  commonly  aroused.  In 
another  respect  he  indicated,  at  the  very  outset  of  his 
Northumbrian  work,  a  love  for  Celtic  ways  as  distinct 
from  Roman.  He  did  not  establish  himself  in  the  capital 
of  the  kingdom,  although  York  had  been  the  seat,  not  only 
of  Paulinus  in  Edwin's  time,  but  of  an  ancient  British 
episcopate  ^.  It  was  not  the  mode  of  Celtic  bishops  to 
regard  practical  and  administrative  convenience  in  the 
selection  of  their  seats:  we  have  already  observed  how 
David  chose  the  remote  and  lonely  Menevia,  doubtless  for 

Lindis-  the  sake  of  ascetic  seclusion  2.  Aidan  carried  with  him  the 
perpetual  remembrance  of  his  old  home  in  what  was 
emphatically  termed  '  The  Island ' :  and  he  found  an  irre- 
sistible attraction  in  the  resemblance  between  Hy  and 
Lindisfarne  ^  a  place  which  Bede  describes  as  '  twice  a  day 
contiguous  to  the  mainland  of  Northumbria,  and  twice  a 
day  like  an  island  enclosed  in  the  sea,  according  to  the 
ebb  and  flow  of  the  tide  ^ : '  a  description  which  is  now 
somewhat  less  accurate,  for  the  path  which  can  be  traversed 

*  See  Raine,  Historians  of  Church  of  York,  i.  p.  xxv,  for  the  preference 
felt  by  king  and  bishop  alike  for  Bernicia,  though  Oswald  completed  the 
church  which  Edwin  had  begun  to  build  at  York. 

^  Bp.  Jones  and  Freeman,  Hist,  St.  David's,  pp.  237,  251.  And  see 
Freeman,  Norm.  Conq.  i.  352  :  '  that  remote  bishopric  whither  St.  David 
had  fled  from  the  face  of  man.'     Above,  p.  37. 

^  That  is,  the  recess  formed  by  the  river  Lindis.  The  Britons  called 
it  Medcaut ;  the  Irish,  Metgoet.  The  App.  to  Nennius  says  that  Urien 
of  Reged  was  treacherously  slain  while  besieging  some  Anglian  princes 
in  the  island. 

*  Bede,  iii.  3.  See  Camden,  Brit.  ii.  1502,  that  the  western  point  is 
joined  to  the  main  part  '  by  a  very  small  strip  of  land  ;  towards  the  south 
it  has  a  small  town,  with  a  church  and  castle,'  &c.  Comp.  Marmion, 
ii.  9  :— 

'■  For,  with  the  flow  and  ebb,  its  style 
Varies  from  continent  to  isle.' 
See  Raine,  i.  19  :  '  Twice  a  day  did  a  belt  of  living  water  encircle  that 
little  sanctuary ;  and  when  it  was  ungirt,  there  were  the  quickssnd  and 
the  shoal.*  The  river  Lindis,  says  Simeon,  'excurrit  in  mare,'  and  is 
visible  at  low  tide ;  the  isle  is  eight  miles,  or  more,  round ;  Hist.  Reg. 
s.  56  (Op.  i.  54). 


Aldan  independent  of  Rome.  159 

about  low  water  from  Beal  is  over  sands  '  at  best  very  wet  chap.  iv. 
and  plashy^.'  No  sacred  spot  in  Britain  is  worthier  of 
a  reverential  visit  than  this  '  Holy  Island '  of  Aidan  and 
his  successors  ^.  As  you  stand  on  its  beach,  or  look  around 
from  the  little  eminence  that  seems  to  guard  the  ruins  of  its 
monastery  ^,  you  see  that  beside  its  general  likeness  to  Hy, 
and  its  facilities  for  devotional  retirement,  it  had  a  more 
material  advantage  in  its  nearness  to  the  royal  fortress-rock 
of  Bamborough,  which  rises  up  majestically  to  the  south. 
Here,  then,  the  new  bishop  established  his  head-quarters  ; 
here  was  all  that  he  could  call  his  own, — the  ground  on 
which  he  built  his  humble  church,  and  a  few  adjacent 
fields  *.  In  entering  on  his  episcopate,  he  neither  sought 
nor  received  any  sanction  from  Rome  or  Canterbury;  he 
was  a  missionary  bishop  sent  from  the  neighbouring  Scotic 
Church,  at  the  request  of  the  Northumbrian  king :  this  was 
his  position,  and  he  would  never  have  admitted  the  principle 
that  all  episcopal  jurisdiction  must  be  derived  from  Rome  ^, 
or  that  a  Pope  had  a  right  to  make  an  English  archbishop 
supreme  over  '  all  the  bishops  of  Britain  ^.'  Yet  Rome 
acknowledges  him  as  a  canonized  bishop  '^. 

Our  next  period,  then,  will  be  characterized  by  another 
great  missionary  efibrt,  carried  on  in  the  north  by  St.  Aidan 
of  Lindisfame. 

*  Murray's  Durham  and  Northumberland,  p.  226 ;  Pearson,  Hist. 
Maps,  p.  2. 

^  '  Locus  cunctis  in  Britannia  venerabilior ;  '  Alcuin  to  Ethelred,  Ep. 
12  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  493. 

^  This  little  hill  must  have  reminded  Aidan  of  the  eminences  in  Hy 
called  *  the  Great  Fort '  and  '  the  Angels'  Mount,'  favourite  seats  of 
Columba ;  Adamn.  i.  30,  ii.  4,  iii.  16. 

*  Bede,  iii.  17  :  '  Utpote  nil  propriae  possessionis,'  &c. 

^  Collier,  i.  203.  *  See  above,  p.  70. 

^  See  Alb.  Butler,  Aug.  31. 


CHAPTER  V. 

Character       The  Scotic  mission  to  King  Oswald's  people  would  engage 
Aidan.       historical  interest  by  the  wide  area  of  its  operation,  affecting, 
as  it  did,  not  only  the  Northumbrian  realm  extending  from 
Edinburgh  to  the  Humber,  or,  during  its  first  seven  years, 
to  the  Trent,  but  also,  ultimately,  the  great  midland  district, 
and  even  the  country  of  the  East-Saxons.     But  it  has  also 
a  yet  stronger  and  more  personal  attractiveness  in  the  won- 
derful beauty  of  character  which  made  '  the  path '  of  its 
chief  'a  shining  light,' — which  acted  like  a  spell  on  the 
rough  Northcountry-men  whose  language  he  had  to  learn 
after  his  arrival, — which  made  him  so  effective  a  converter 
of   souls,  because   so   potent   a  winner  of  hearts, — which 
proved   too    much   for   anti-Scotic  prejudices,  national  or 
ecclesiastical,   and    through   various    lines   of    testimony  ^ 
impressed  itself  on  the  English-born  Church-historian  as 
virtually  a  model  of  Christian  excellence.     His  relation  to 
English  Christianity  as  a  whole  has  indeed  been  somewhat 
seriously  overrated,  whether  on  account  of  his  own  rare 
merits  or  from  the  controversial  instinct  of  underrating  our 
religious   obligation  to  Italy.     A  prelate  whose   personal 
energies  found  full  occupation  within  his  own  great  diocese, 
and  who  had  no  opportunity  of  promoting  any  mission 
beyond    its  limits,   cannot  with   anything   like    historical 
exactness  be  called  '  the  apostle  of  England ' :  he  was  not 
even,  in  a  proper  sense,  the  apostle  of  Northumbria  ^.     But 
such  exaggeration  cannot  in  the  least  affect  his  claim  on 
the  reverence  of  all  who  appreciate  true  'sanctity.     Let  us 
put  together  what  Bede  takes   such  evident  delight  ^  in 

*  '  Quantum  ab  eis  qui  ilium  novere  didicimus  ; '  Bede,  ill.  17. 
'  I  may  refer,  on  this  point,  to  my  '  Waymarks  in  Church  History,* 
P-  307. 

'  '  His  virtues,'  says  Hook,  '  were  such  as  compel  the  reluctant  admiration 


Aldan  as  Bishop.  i6i 

telling  us  as  to  what  Aidan  was,  and  how  he  lived  and   chap.  v. 
worked  in  Northumbria. 

'  A  man/  he  begins,  '  of  the  utmost  gentleness,  piety,  and 
moderation  ^ : '  and  in  subsequent  passages  he  tells  us  that 
Aidan  was  earnest  in  promoting  peace  and  charity,  purity 
and  humility,  was  superior  to  anger  and  avarice,  despised 
pride  and  vainglory,  and  was  a  conspicuous  example  of 
entire  unworldliness,  strictly  temperate  in  all  his  habits, 
sedulous  in  study  and  devotion,  full  of  tenderness  for  all 
sufferers,  and  of  righteous  sternness  towards  powerful 
offenders  ^ :  that  he  '  took  pains  to  fulfil  diligently  the 
works  of  faith,  piety,  and  love,  according  to  the  usual 
manner  of  all  holy  men  ^,'  and,  in  a  word,  to  '  omit  not  one 
of  all  the  duties  prescribed  in  the  evangelical,  apostolical, 
or  prophetical  Scriptures,  but  to  perform  them  to  the 
utmost  of  his  power  *.'  No  wonder,  then,  that  his  doctrine 
was  thus  recommended  by  the  absolute  consistency  of  what 
he  did  with  what  he  taught  ^.  As  for  his  •  daily  life  in 
Lindisf  arne,  it  was  that  of  a  monk  ^,  governed  by  rules  and 
habits  which  he  brought  with  him  from  Hy.  He  obtained 
fellow-workers  from  his  old  country  '^,  whose  spirit  was  as 
his  spirit :  he  formed  a  school  of  English  boys,  twelve 
in  number  ^,  who  were  trained  up  in  holy  ways  under  his 
own  eye,  that  they  might  in  due  time  preach  to  their  own 
countrymen  ^, — and    among    whom    one   was    afterwards 

of  the  candid  Bede '  (i.  120),  This  is  not  candid  towards  Bede,  whose 
tribute  of  admiration  for  Aidan's  character,  recurring  in  several  chapters, 
is  unequivocally  hearty  :  on  its  '  earnestness  and  eloquence,'  as  expressive 
of  a  'thorough  veneration,'  see  Burton,  Hist.  Scotl.  i.  269, 

'  Bede,  iii.  3.  ^  Comp.  Bede,  iii.  5,  17. 

'  Bede,  iii.  25  :  *  Opera  tamen  fidei  .  .  .  diligenter  exsequi  curavit.' 

*  Bede,  iii.  17  :  '  Qui,  ut  breviter  multa  comprehendam,'  &c. 

5  Bede,  iii.  5  :  '  Cujus  doctrinam,'  &c.  Compare  i.  26,  on  Augustine 
and  his  companions  ;  see  above,  p.  56.  It  is  significant  that  Bede  inti- 
mates the  same  combination  as  to  Wilfrid,  iv.  13. 

^  Bede,  iii.  3  ;  iv.  27.  All  the  bishops  of  the  line  which  began  with 
him  were  monks,  until  1072  ;  Simeon  of  Durham,  de  Dunelm.  Eccl.  i.  2. 

''  Bede,  iii.  3.     Ireland  is  meant. 

^  Twelve  was  regarded  as  a  sacred  number.  See  instances  in  Reeves's 
Adamnan,  pp.  299-303  :  and  Tripart.  Life,  ii.  447.  See  above,  p.  150,  on 
Oswald's  twelve  attendants. 

•  Bede,  iii.  26.     So  when  St.  Anskar  began  his  work  in  Denmark,  he 

M 


i62  Aidan  as  Bishop, 

CHAP.  V.  famous  as  St.  Chad  ^.  Occasionally  Aidan  would  retire 
for  devotional  solitude  to  the  chief  islet  of  the  Fame  group, 
lying  off  Bamborough,  on  which,  in  Bede's  time,  '  it  was 
usual  to  point  out  the  spot  where  he  was  wont  to  sit 
alone  ^.'  We  find  also  that  he  brought  in  the  practice  of 
fasting  on  all  Wednesdays  and  Fridays  until  3  p.m.  except 
during  '  the  fifty  days  of  Easter  ^.'  In  his  actual  mission 
work,  he  travelled  on  foot,  unless  compelled  by  necessity  to 
ride :  we  shall  see  ere  long  what  he  did  with  a  horse,  which 
was  a  royal  gift  intended  to  facilitate  these  journeys*. 
This  habit  of  walking  enabled  him  easily  to  turn  aside  and 
endeavour  to  enter  into  conversation  with  any  one  whom 
he  met,  rich  or  poor, — if  a  heathen,  to  invite  him  '  to  receive 
the  mystery  of  the  faith  ^ ; '  if  a  believer,  ^  to  confirm  him  in 
that  faith,  and  to  stir  him  up  by  words  and  example  to  the 
performance  of  almsdeeds  and  good  works,' — language  which 
indicates  clearly  enough  that  many  of  Paulinus'  converts  had 
held  fast  their  Christianity,  and  needed  from  Aidan  nothing 
but  the  ordinary  pastoral  exhortations  to  persevere  in  it 
and  live  up  to  it.  While  he  and  his  companions  travelled, 
they  used  to  '  meditate '  on  texts  of  Scripture,  or  recite 
psalms  :  '  this  was  '  their  '  daily  work  ^.'    Aidan  was  happy 

began  to  form  such  a  school  of  twelve  or  more  Danish  boys  *  who  might 
be  educated  for  God's  service  ; '  Vit.  S.  Anskar.  8  (Pertz,  Mon.  Germ.  H. 
ii.  696).  It  is  needless  to  refer  to  the  practice  of  Bishops  G.  Selwyn  and 
Patteson. 

*  Bede,  ill.  28.     Another  was  Eata,  iii.  26. 

^  Bede,  iii.  16.  This  is  called  the  '  House  Island,'  about  a  mile  and 
a  half  from  the  shore.  See  it  described  in  Bede,  iv.  28  ;  Vit.  Cuthb.  1 7. 
Comp.  Adamnan,  iii.  8,  that  Columba  one  day,  in  Hy,  *  remotiorem  .  .  , 
locum  aptumque  ad  orationem  in  saltibus  quaesivit.'  A  similar  practice 
was  attributed  to  Ninian ;  Lives  of  Ninian  and  Kentigern,  ed.  Forbes, 
p.  284  ;  and  Anskar  had  a  cell  made  for  such  purposes,  which  he  called 
*  locum  quietum,'  Vit.  Ansk.  35. 

^  Bede,  iii.  5.     Cp.  Adamn.  i.  26 ;  Warren,  Lit.  and  Ritual,  &c.,  p.  146. 

*  Bede,  iii.  5,  14.  On  his  preaching-circuits,  see  also  Bede,  iii.  17. 
"While  travelling,  Aidan,  as  a  monk,  wore  sandals  ;  his  garments  consisted 
of  a  thick  woollen  '  cuculla*  or  '  cape,'  or  in  winter  an  *  amphibalus,'  and 
below  it  a  shirt,  *  tunica.'  See  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  356.  The  front  of 
his  head  showed  the  Irish  tonsure  ;  behind,  the  long  hair  flowed  down  ; 
see  Reeves,  p.  350,  and  Maclear,  Apost.  Mediaev.  Eur.  p.  57. 

5  *  Ad  fidei  suscipiendae  sacramentum,'  for  *  ad  fidei  suscipiendum,'  &c. 

*  Bede,  iii.  5  :  '  In  tantum  autem,'  &c.  Bede  contrasts  this  with  '  the 
sluggishness  of  his  own  'time.'     So  Adamnan  says,  Columba   'never 


Aldan  and  Oswald,  163 

indeed  in  having  an  Oswald  for  his  king  :  and  in  the  early  chap.  v. 
days  of  his  episcopate,  Oswald  was  often  to  be  seen  employ- 
ing that  knowledge  of  the  '  Scottish '  or  Irish  tongue  which 
he  owed  to  his  exile  in  interpreting  the  missionary  addresses 
of  the  bishop, — a  sight  which  Bede  might  well  call  '  truly 
beautiful^.'  In  this,  as  in  other  matters,  Oswald  showed 
a  depth  and  fervour  of  personal  piety  which  we  do  not  find 
in  Edwin,  and  which  reminds  us  of  Alfred  or  St.  Louis. 
He  and  Aidan  worked  together  as  Sigebert  did  with  Felix. 
But  knowing  Aidan's  ascetic  habits,  Oswald  did  not  often 
invite  him  to  the  royal  table  :  when  the  bishop  appeared 
there,  it  was  with  one  or  two  attendant  clerics ;  '  and  when 
he  had  taken  a  little  refreshment,  he  would  make  haste  to 
go  out  in  order  to  read  with  his  brethren,  or  to  pray  ^,'  for 
he  had  '  a  church  and  a  bedchamber '  near  the  '  royal  city ' 
of  Bamborough  ^.  We  hear  of  his  sharing  the  king's  fore- 
noon meal  on  a  certain  Easter  Sunday,  when  '  a  silver  dish 
full  of  royal  dainties  was  set  before  them  on  the  board,  and 
they  were  just  about  to  stretch  out  their  hands  to  bless  the 
bread  * : '  then  enters  a  thane,  '  whose  charge  it  was  to 
relieve  the  poor,  and  informs  Oswald  that  a  great  crowd  of 
poor  folk,  assembled  from  all  the  country-side,  were  sitting 
in  the  streets  begging  some  alms  from  the  king :  Oswald 
orders  the  contents  of  the  dish  to  be  carried  to  them,  and 

could  pass  a  single  hour  without  employing  himself  in  prayer,  or  reading, 
or  writing,  or  some  other  work  ; '  Vit.  Col.  praef.  2.  On  the  frequent 
recitation  of  psalms,  see  Bede,  iii.  27,  iv.  23,  v.  14,  19,  H.  Abb.  16, 

^  Bede,  iii.  3 :  '  Ubi  pulcherrimo,'  &c.  He  implies  that  Aidan  could 
speak  English,  though  imperfectly.  See  iii.  14  for  his  conversation  with 
King  Oswin.  Comp,  Rich.  Hexham,  X  Script.  290 :  '  The  race  of  the 
Bernicians  was  converted  in  634  by  the  preaching  of  the  saints  Oswald  . .  . 
and  Aidan.*  So  Simeon,  Dun.  Eccl.  i.  i  :  *  Rex,  utique  Regis  aeterni 
minister  devotus,  adsistere,  et  fidus  interpres  fidei,  ducibus  suis  et  minis- 
tris  ministrare  solebat  verba  salutis.*  As  Churton  says,  E.  E.  Ch.  p.  72, 
it  is  'a  striking  instance  of  the  care  of  Providence  turning  the  misfortunes 
of  his  youth  to  a  means  of  blessing.'  A  much  later  case  of  a  king  inter- 
preting a  missionary's  sermons  was  that  of  Gottschalk,  king  of  the  Wends 
in  the  eleventh  century ;  Hardwick,  Ch.  Hist.  M.  Ages,  p.  128. 

2  Bede,  iii.  5  :   '  Et  si  forte  evenisset,'  &c. 

^  Bede,  iii.  17  :  'In  hac  enim  habens  ecclesiam,'  &c. 

*  Literally,  this  implies  that  the  king  was  to  join  with  the  prelate  in 
this  *  grace  before  meat.'  The  passage  is  another  illustration  of  the  fact 
that  the  Celts  were  not  properly  Quartodecimans. 

M  2 


164  Aldan's  charity  and  boldness, 

cnAr.  V.  the  dish  itself  to  be  broken  and  divided  for  their  benefit.' 
On  this  Aidan  seizes  the  king's  right  hand,  and  says, '  May 
this  hand  never  decay  ^ ! '  In  his  dealings  with  the  rich, 
Aidan  showed  his  superiority  to '  fear  or  favour ' :  he  never 
withheld  a  rebuke  deserved  by  misdoings  of  theirs,  but 
always  administered  it  with  the  authority  befitting  a 
bishop  ^.  If  a  thane  came  to  Lindisfarne,  he  was  hos- 
pitably entertained,  but  got  none  of  those  money-presents 
which,  in  the  Eastern  Church,  had  been  euphemistically 
called  '  blessings  ^,'  and  being  professedly  tokens  of  good- 
will from  ecclesiastics,  were  often  little  else  than  bribes  to 
secure  the  interest  of  a  powerful  layman,  or  even  payments 
regarded  as  his  due.  On  the  other  hand,  if  a  rich  man 
oflTered  money  to  Aidan,  it  went  promptly  to  the  poor  *, 
whose  sufferings  were  ever  in  the  thought  of  this  true 
'  cherisher  of  the  needy  and  father  of  the  wretched  ^  : '  or 
else  it  was  disposed  of,  as  Gregory  himself  might  have 
disposed  of  such  gifts,  in  ransoming  those  who  had  been 
unjustly  sold  into  slavery,  many  of  whom,  when  thus 
delivered,  became  Aidan's  pupils,  and  were  ultimately  pro- 
moted by  him  to  the  priesthood  ^.  One  thing  alone  Bede 
could  not  approve  in  Aidan, — the  inevitable  Celtic  error 
about  the  Paschal  reckoning.     On  this  point  Aidan's  '  zeal 

*  The  hand,  Bede  adds,  was  preserved  in  the  royal  city  of  Bamborough, 
and  remained  there,  to  his  days,  undecayed ;  iii.  6.  Simeon  of  Durham 
(twelfth  century)  says  that  Swartebrand,  a  monk  of  that  church,  who 
had  'recently'  died,  declared  that  he  had  often  seen  this  'right  hand,' 
undecayed  ;  Dun.  Ecc.  i.  2.  See  Malmesbury's  remarks  on  this  marvel ; 
Gest.  Reg.  i.  49.  Oswald  is  called  in  Nennius  '  Oswald  Lamnguin,'  the 
'white  hand.'  See  Green,  Hist.  Eng.  People,  p.  23  ;  Lappenberg,  i.  162', 
*  the  fair  or  free  of  hand.* 

''  Bede,  iii.  5,  17.  So  Anskar  seemed  '  terribilis  *  to  '  potentes  et  divites  ' 
if  '  contumaces,'  while  '  mediocres  *  regarded  him  as  a  brother,  and  the 
poor  as  a  father ;  Vit.  35. 

^  '  Eulogiae,'  Fleury,  b.  27.  c.  12.  The  word  passed  over  into  Western 
use  for  any  presents,  as  in  Greg.  Ep.  xiii.  42  (cp.  ^benedictionem,'  Bede, 
ii.  10,  11);  and  (like  'benevolence'}  gradually  lost  the  sense  of  a  Jree 
gift. 

*  Bede,  iii.  5  :  '  Sed  ea  potius  quae  sibi  a  divitibus,*  &c.  Comp.  iii.  26  : 
*Si  quid  enim  pecuniae,'  &c. 

^  Bede,  iii.  14  :  '  Erat  enim  multum  misericors,'  &c.  :  ib.  5,  17.  Com- 
pare Adamn.  Vit.  Col.  i.  46. 

®  Bede,  iii.  5  :  '  Denique  multos,'  &c. 


His  ^ error'  as  to  Easter,  165 

was  not  fully  according  to  knowledge  ^ : '  so  Bede  expresses  chap.  v. 
himself,  but  takes  oif  the  edge  of  this  gentle  censure  by 
suggesting  in  one  passage  that  Aidan  might  be  ignorant  of 
the  true  reckoning  ^,  and  by  telling  us  in  another  that 
those  in  Northumbria  who  knew  it  were  tolerant  of  his 
observance,  because  they  understood  '  that  he  was  unable 
to  deviate  from  the  custom  of  those  who  had  sent  him  ;  so 
that  he  was  deservedly  loved  by  those  who  differed  from 
him  about  the  Pasch,'  and  respected  even  by  such  dignified 
representatives  of  '  Catholic  observance '  as  archbishop 
Honorius  and  bishop  Felix  ^.  And  after  all,  says  Bede, 
'he  did  not,  as  some  have  thought,  keep  the  feast,  in 
Jewish  fashion,  on  the  fourteenth  moon  on  any  week-day  *, 
but  always  on  a  Sunday,  from  the  fourteenth  to  the 
twentieth  ; '  that  is,  if  the  fourteenth  were  on  a  Sunday, 
he  would  make  that  his  Easter  Sunday,  and  so  on  until  the 
twentieth  ^ ;  whereas,  according  to  Catholic  rules,  he  should 
in  that  case  have  deferred  the  festival  until  the  next  Sunday, 
the  twenty-first.  He  would  always,  says  Bede,  '  celebrate ' 
the  '  Pasch  '  on  a  Sunday,  '  because,  with  the  Holy  Church, 
he  believed  the  Lord's  resurrection  to  have  taken  place  on 
the  first  day  of  the  week,  and  hoped  that  our  resurrection 
would  in  truth  take  place  on  the  same  day  of  the  week  '^, 
now  called  the  Lord's  day.'     '  His  keeping  the  Pasch  out  of 

^  Bede,  iii.  3  :  '  Zelum  Dei,  quamvis  non  iglene  secundum  scientiam,'  for 
he  kept  Easter  Sunday  '  from  the  fourteenth  to  the  twentieth  moon.' 

"^  Bede,  iii.  17  :  'Quod  autem  Pascha,'  &c.  Cp.  iii.  4,  '  Sciebant  enim,* 
&c. 

^  Bede,  iii.  25  :  '  Haec  autem  dissonantia,'  &c.  'Pascha  contra  morem 
eorum  qui  ipsum  miserant  facere  nonpotuit.'  Cp.  iii.  17,  '  vel  suae  gentis,* 
&c. 

*  'In  qualibet  feria,'  Bede,  iii.  17.     See  above,  p.  90. 

^  So  that  the  seven  days  on  one  of  which,  if  it  were  a  Sunday,  Easter 
might  be  celebrated,  were,  for  Aidan  and  the  Celtic  churches,  'fourteenth 
moon — twentieth  ; '  for  the  Roman  and  other  churches,  '  fifteenth  moon 
— twenty-first.' 

*  Bede,  iii.  17  :  'propter  fidera  videlicet,*  &c.  The  British  Christians 
thought  that  the  La^t  Day  would  be  a  Sunday  ;  Williams,  Eccl.  Ant.  Cym. 
p.  299.  Some  early  Christians  believed  that  the  Lord  would  return  in 
the  night  of  the  great  Easter  vigil.  So  Lactantius,  Div.  Instit.  vii.  19  : 
'  Haec  est  nox  quae  nobis  propter  adventum  Regis  ac  Dei  nostri  pervigilio 
celebratur  ;  cujus  noctis  duplex  ratio  est,  quod  in  ea  et  vitam  turn  recepit 
cum  passus  est,  et  postea  orbis  terrae  regnum  recepturus  est/ 


i66  Church-work  under  Aidan. 

CHAP.  V.  its  time  I  do  not  approve  of  nor  commend.  But  this  I  do 
approve  of,  that  what  he  kept  in  thought,  reverenced,  and 
preached,  in  the  celebration  of  his  Paschal  festival;  was  just 
what  ice  do,  that  is,  the  redemption  of  mankind  through 
the  Passion,  Resurrection,  and  Ascension  into  heaven  of  the 
Mediator  between  God  and  men,  the  Man  Christ  Jesus.' 
In  other  words,  the  root  of  the  matter  was  found  in  him. 

Such  was  he  whom  a  recent  historian  with  no  eccle- 
siastical prepossessions  frankly  calls  the  '  illustrious  ^ ' 
St.  Aidan.  Being  such  as  he  was,  he  did  great  things 
for  the  good  cause  in  Northumbria,  as  a  planter  or  a 
restorer  of  corporate  Christian  life.  Churches,  doubtless 
mostly  of  wood  ^, '  were  built  in  various  places :  the  people 
flocked  together  with  gladness  to  hear  the  Word :  posses- 
sions and  pieces  of  ground  for  founding  monasteries  were 
bestowed  by  the  king's  gift :  English  children  were  taught, 
by  Irish  preceptors,  the  rudiments  of  learning,  together 
with  more  advanced  studies  and  the  observance  of  regular 
discipline  ^.'     To  some  extent,  assuredly,  Aidan  was  entering 

^  Burton,  Hist.  Scotl.  i.  269,  297. 

^  See  below  on  the  wooden  church  of  bishop  Finan  at  Lindisfame.  The 
*  old  church '  of  wicker  and  timber  at  Glastonbury  on  the  site  now  occu- 
pied by  the  misnamed  *  chapel  of  St.  Joseph,'  was  Celtic  ;  see  Freeman, 
Engl.  Towns  and  Districts,  p.  98.  For  notices  of  primitive  Irish  churches 
built  of  wood  or  earth,  see  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  177,  and  Whitley  Stokes's 
Tripartite  Life  of  St.  Patrick,  i.  p.  clvi.  When,  in  the  twelfth  century, 
Malachy  archbishop  of  Armagh  began  to  build  at  Bangor  a  church  of  stone, 
the  natives  wondered,  '  quod  in  terra  ilia  necdum  ejusmodi  aedificia 
invenirentur.'  An  opponent  exclaimed  against  the  innovation  :  *  Scoti 
sumus,  non  Galli  .  .  .  Quid  opus  erat  opere  tam  superfluo,  tam  superbo  ?  * 
S.  Bernard,  de  Vit.  Malach.  28.  See  Lanigan,  Eccl.  H.  Irel.  iv.  127,  39a. 
But  several  primitive  Irish  churches  were  of  stone  (Petrie,  Eccl.  Arch, 
p.  127  ff.  ;  Anderson's  Scotl.  in  Early  Christian  Times,  p.  80  if.),  while 
most  of  the  smaller  *  Saxon '  ones  were  of  wood,  such  as  that  of  Bam- 
borough,  Bede,  iii.  17  ;  that  of  Dulting,  where  St.  Aldhelm  died  ;  that  at 
Wilton,  superseded  in  1065  by  a  stone  church  (Freeman,  ii.  520) ;  and  the 
wooden  chapel,  built  before  the  Conquest,  outside  the  east  gate  at  Shrews- 
bury, in  which,  in  1080,  Orderic  Vitalis  as  a  boy  served  mass,  and  instead 
of  which  his  father  began  to  build  a  church  of  stone,  the  nucleus  of  a  great 
abbey  (Ord.  Vit.  v.  14,  xiii.  45  ;  Freeman,  iv.  494).  The  little  old  wooden 
church  of  Greensted,  in  Essex,  is  the  sole  representative  of  this  class  of 
churches.  Its  nave  is  composed  of  '  the  trunks  of  large  oak  trees,  split  or 
sawn  asunder.' 

'  Bede,  iii.  3 :  *  Construebantur  ergo,*  &c. ;  Stubbs,  Constitutional 
History,  1.  258. 


Church-work  under  Atdan.  167 

into  another  man's  labours,  having  found  the  soil  prepared  chap.  v. 
by  Paulinus.  But  he  left  behind  him  a  stronger  impression 
of  spirituality  and  saintliness  than  we  are  led  to  associate 
with  his  predecessor :  we  find  that  men  believed  his  prayers 
to  have  special  efficacy  ^,  and  resorted  to  him,  as  to  a  second 
Columba,  for  such  intercessory  help.  And  he  was  mani- 
festly happier  than  Paulinus,  in  that  he  was  able  to  obtain 
a  large  supply  of  '  devoted  ^ '  clergy ;  and  although  he  had 
his  own  heavy  sorrows  and  serious  anxieties^,  his  work, 
in  an  episcopate  of  sixteen  years*,  encountered  no  such 
shock  as  that  which  followed  the  day  of  Hatfield.  The 
religion  which  he  taught  was  essentially  identical  with 
that  which  prevailed  at  Canterbury  or  Dunwich,  where 
his  name  was  held  in  honour.  Mass  was  celebrated  at 
Lindisfarne  on  Sundays  and  holy-days  ^,  certainly  with  no 
splendour  of  visible  surroundings,  and  probably  with  rites 
difiering  in  some  measure  (not,  of  course,  as  to  the  essentials 
of  the  service)  from  those  of  the  Gregorian  liturgy  which 
Augustine  had  brought  into  Kent,  and  cognate  to  the 
Gallican  use  which  Felix,  perhaps,  had  introduced  into 
East-Anglia :  but  the  usual  language  about '  the  mysteries 
of  the  sacred  Eucharist  ^ '  was  as  familiar  to  a  disciple 
of  Hy  or  of  Lindisfarne  as  to  the  churchmen  of  Gaul  or 
Italy.  Much  importance  was  attached  by  Celtic  monks 
to  acts  of  benediction  '^ :  and  we  find  that  Aidan  was 
wont  to  consecrate  land  designed  for  sacred  purposes  by 
an  elaborate  process  of  fastings  and  prayers,  performed 

^  Bede,  iii.  15.  Comp.  Adamn.  Vit.  Col.  ii.  13,  *  sociis  ut  pro  eis 
Dominum  Sanctus  exoraret,  inclamitantibus,'  and  ib.  i.  50. 

^  *  Magna  devotione,'  Bede,  iii.  3.  ^  Bede,  iii.  9,  14,  16. 

*  Bede,  iii.  17. 

'  In  Columba's  time  there  was  not  a  daily  celebration  at  Hy ;  Adamnan, 
iii.  II,  12.  It  seems  also  that  at  Lindisfarne,  at  the  close  of  the  seventh 
century,  mass  was  said  only  on  Sundays  ;  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  44.  So, 
according  to  the  Chronicle  of  Abingdon,  it  was  on  Sundays  and  chief 
festivals  that  the  monks  of  its  first  monastery  assembled  for  mass  ;  Chron. 
Ab,  ii.  273. 

^  See  the  description  of  Columba  *  standing  before  the  altar,  and  con- 
secrating the  sacred  oblation,*  Adamn.  iii.  17  ;  and  ib.  i.  40,  '  the  pure 
mysteries  of  the  sacred  oblation.'     Cp.  iii.  12.     See  above,  p.  116. 

^  See  Adamnan  frequently ;  especially  the  simple  and  touching  anec- 
dotes in  i.  3,  9 ;  ii.  31  ;  and  iii.  23.     Cp.  Tripart.  Life,  i.  37,  71,  163. 


i68  Mission  of  Birinus. 

CHAP.  V.  for  days  beforehand  on  the  spot  ^.  The  Scotic  conventual 
rule  was  severer  than  that  of  Benedict  ^r  and  heinous 
offences  were  visited  with  prolonged  penances  like  those 
of  antiquity  ^  The  whole  system  had  a  rude  and  homely 
simplicity:  it  took  no  heed  of  sacred  art,  was  untouched 
by  the  influence  of  the  continental  Church  atmosphere, 
and  kept  its  followers  aloof  from  what  might  be  called 
ecclesiastical  civilization. 
Btnnus  m  From  a  very  different  quarter,  and  in  the  year  before 
Aidan's  arrival*,  came  another  great  awakening,  with 
which  we  in  Oxfordshire  are  specially  concerned :  for  this 
district  was  then  ^  West-Saxon,  and  the  apostle  of  Wessex 
was  Birinus.  His  origin  is  not  ascertained  ^ ;  the  statement 
that  he  was  a  Roman  monk  is  probably  a  conjecture"^. 
He  went  to  Pope  Honorius,  and  solemnly  promised  before 
him  8  '  that  he  would  scatter  the  seeds  of  the  holy  faith 
in  those  furthest  inland  territories  of  the  English,  which 
no  teacher  as  yet  had  visited.'  Honorius  sent  him  for 
episcopal  consecration  to  Asterius  archbishop  of  Milan, 
who,  like  his  predecessors  from  568,  avoided  contact  with 
the  dominant  Arian  Lombards  by  residing  within  the 
imperial  territory  at  Genoa  ^.     Thus  it  was  that,  in  634, 

'  This  is  implied  in  Bede,  iii.  23,  <  Dicebat  enim,'  &c.,  where  he  describes 
Cedd's  dedication  of  Lastingham. 

2  This  may  be  inferred  from  the  rule  of  Columban  ;  Columba's  was 
probably  milder,  Eeeves's  Adamn.  p.  355  :  but  see  Adamnan,  i.  31,  ii.  4, 
on  the  strict  obedience  required  by  Columba,  and  Keeves's  Adamnan, 
p.  343.  And  on  the  'exceedingly  severe  discipline'  of  St.  Fintan  at 
Cloneuagh,  Lanigan,  ii.  228. 

^  See  Adamnan,  i,  22  ;  ii.  39. 

*  The  Chronicle  dates  it  in  634. 

'  And  on  the  whole,  until  the  Mercian  king  Offa  won  the  battle  of 
Bensington  in  777  ;  A.-S.  Chron.     See  Freeman,  Old-Engl.  Hist.  p.  82. 

^  Malmesb.  G.  Pont.  ii.  57  ;  p.  157.  Baring- Gould,  Lives  of  Saints, 
Dec.  3,  thinks  that  his  name  indicates  a  Teutonic  origin. 

^  Bromton  says  that  *  fama  suavissimae  opinionis  sancti  Birini  presby- 
leri,  de  civitate  Romana  nati,'  reached  pope  HonoriQs  ;  X  Script.  755. 

*  *  Illo  praesente,'  Bede,  iii.  7. 

^  Gibbon,  iv.  558  :  Duchesne,  Origines  du  Culte,  p.  84.  It  was 
a  natural  mistake  on  Bede's  part  to  call  him  bishop  of  Genoa.  He  held 
the  see  of  Milan  from  628  to  638.  He  died  at  Genoa  on  the  4th  of  June, 
and  was  buried  *  in  the  church  of  St.  Syrus'  (a  bishop  of  Genoa,  cp.  Webb's 
Contin.  Ecclesiology,  p.  402)  ;  Ughelli,  Italia  Sacra,  iv.  92.  Birinus  was 
made  a  *  regionary '  or  missionary  bishop,  and  left  free  to  choose  his  own 


He  preaches  in  Wessex,  169 

Birinus  landed  in  Hampshire  \  and  soon  found  that  the  chap.  v. 
West-Saxon  districts  contained  heathenism  so  dark  and 
intense  ^  as  to  call  for  the  immediate  help  of  a  missionary. 
These  people  were  as  truly  sitting  '  in  the  shadow  of  death ' 
as  any  in  parts  more  distant :  why  should  he  neglect  them, 
and  go  further  in  search  of  others  1  Taking  his  discovery 
as  a  call  to  alter  his  original  purpose,  Birinus  went  about 
Wessex,  preaching  with  such  persuasive  energy  that  he 
soon  won  a  royal  convert.  Kynegils  ^  had  reigned  for  Conver- 
twenty-four  years :  he  was  probably  weary  of  strife  and  Kynegils 
bloodshed :  he  had,  in  his  time,  slain  thousands  of  Britons, 
had  seen  his  realm  overrun  by  Edwin,  had  made  terms, 
at  some  cost,  with  Penda.  He  listened  to  the  foreign 
teacher  * :  Woden  and  Thunor  and  Tiu,  the  gods  of  war 
and  storm  and  death,  lost  their  hold  upon  him :  he  felt 
the  strong  'drawing'  of  the  Gospel,  and  asked  to  be 
prepared  for  admission  into  the  Church.  Birinus  had 
succeeded  speedily  in  a  work  which  had  kept  Paulinus 
under  suspense:  Kynegils  was  more  prompt  than  Edwin, 
and  seemingly  not  less  sincere.  And  observe  another 
coincidence.  The  successor  of  Edwin,  now  'Bretwalda,' 
was  desirous  of  an  alliance  with  the  West-Saxon  princes ; 
Kynegils  was  asked  to  give  his  daughter^  in  marriage 
as  wife  to  Oswald.  He  consented :  and,  according  to  our 
chronology,  it  was  at  some  time — probably  late — in  635, 

centre  of  operations, — as  had  been  Ninian's  case,  and  as  was  the  case  with 
Swidbert,  Boniface  (at  any  rate  at  first),  Amandus,  &c.  (Maclear,  Ap. 
Med.  Eur.  p.  77,  &c.).  Milner  suggests  that  at  Genoa  Birinus  could  learn 
Saxon  from  '  Franks  who  frequented  that  mart  ' ;  Hist.  Winch,  i.  67. 

'  Bromton  gives  a  story  of  a  miracle  connected  with  a  pallula  or  cor- 
poral, *Corpusque  Dominicum  in  eadem  involutum,'  which,  he  says, 
Honorius  had  given  to  Birinus,  and  which  he  carried  '  collo  suspensum.' 
See  Milner,  1.  c. 

^  *  Paganissimos.'  See  Chron.  Abingd.  vol.  ii.  p.  v.  On  his  landing, 
said  the  legend  given  by  Bromton,  he  preached  the  faith  for  three  days  ; 
among  his  audience  were  many  who  had  been  converted  by  Augustine. 

^  See  Chron.  a.  611.  In  614  he  had  defeated  the  Britons  at  Bampton. 
In  628  the  Mercians  had  defeated  him  near  Cirencester. 

*  Churn  Knob,  a  hill  near  Chilton  in  Berkshire,  is  *  traditionally  said 
to  be  the  spot  where  Birinus '  preached  to  Kynegils.  See  Murray's  Hand- 
book to  Berks,  &c.,  p.  74. 

^  Reginald  calls  her  Kyneburg,  Vit.  Osw.  c.  11. 


1 70  Baptism  of  Kynegils. 

CHAP.  V.    towards  the  end  of  Oswald's  first  year  of  royalty,  that  he 

himself  came  into  Wessex  to  take  home  his  bride.     Her 

father  was  just   ready  for   baptism;    and  it  was   agreed 

that  he  should  then  become  a  Christian,  before  the  Christian 

Baptism  of  Oswald  became  his  son-in-law.     And  now  we  are  brought 

ynegis.  ^gj,y  jjgg^j,  j^Qjj^Q.    fQj.  ^]^Q  place  selected^  was  that  same 

Dorchester,  so  familiar  to  us  at  Oxford,  where  the  venerable 
abbey  church  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul  now  occupies  the 
traditional  spot  that  witnessed  the  Christianizing  of  the 
dynasty  which  grew  into  the  royal  line  of  England.  It 
is  easy  to  realize  the  scene :  the  Saxon  '  Dorcic  ^,'  retaining 
traces  of  the  Roman  Dorocina,  and  guarded,  southwards, 
by  the  embankment  still  called  the  Dykes,  and  beyond 
them  by  the  twin  clumps  of  '  the  mighty  hill  fort  of 
Sinodum  ^,'  perhaps  the  scene  of  a  dislodgement  of  Britons 
by  Aulus  Plautius*  in  A.  D.  43.  Briton  and  Roman  have 
passed  away  from  the  Thames  valley:  there  are  kings 
here  now,  representing  Ida  the  conqueror,  and  Cerdic 
the  founder  of  a  realm  which  is  to  absorb  the  rest :  but  the 
Kingdom  here  '  evidently  set  forth '  is  that  which  '  is  not 
from  this  world.'  There,  in  white  pontificals,  with  atten- 
dant clergy  on  either  side,  stands  its  foreign  representative, 
deriving  his  commission  from  the  mighty  Roman  Church, 
and  his  episcopate  from  the  great  see  of  St.  Ambrose: 
a  font,  large  enough  for  immersion,  is  solemnly  hallowed ; 
the  war-worn  royal  convert  steps  into  it,  and  is  baptized : 
and  '  as  he  comes  forth  from  the  laver/  he  is  '  lifted  up,' 
according  to  the  usual  rite  ^,  by  the  future  son-in-law  who 

*  Bede  does  not  say  so,  but  the  Chronicle  does,  a.  635. 

^  So  Bede  calls  it,  iii.  7.  '■  The  old  home  of  Birinus  by  the  winding 
Thames ; '  Freeman,  iv.  419 :  once  *  Caer  Dauri.'  It  must  have  been  at 
that  time  within  the  West-Saxon  border  :  Kynegils  could  not  have  thus 
dealt  with  a  town  actually  Mercian.  Oxfordshire,  therefore,  was  not 
included  in  the  territory  gained  by  Mercia  after  the  battle  of  Cirencester  : 
see  Green,  Making  of  Engl.  p.  267. 

^  Freeman,  1.  c. :  comp.  iii.  543. 

*  See  Mr.  James  Parker's  paper  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Oxford 
Architect,  and  Hist.  Soc.  for  Mich.  Term,  1862. 

'  *  Eumque  de  lavacro  exeuntem  suscepisse  ;  *  comp.  Bede,  iii.  22,  iv.  13  ; 
and  Greg.  Turon.  H.  Fr.  vii.  22  :  *  Eo  quod  filium  ejus  de  sacro  lavacro 
suscepissem.'  So  ib.  v.  19  :  '  Filio  meo  .  .  .  quem  de  lavacro  regenera- 
tionis  excepi,'  and  23  ;  vi.  27  ;  x.  a8,  where  a  king  says  that  no  Christian 


Birinus  Bishop  of  Dorchester.  171 

now  acts  as  his  sponsor  ^,  and  who  invests,  for  us,  that    chap.  v. 
river-side  with  the  noble  associations  that  attend  the  name 
of  our  truest  royal  saint. 

It  is  natural,  especially  in  Oxford,  to  dwell  thus  on  an 
event  only  second  in  interest — when  one  considers  the 
destinies  of  Wessex — to  the  baptism  of  Ethelbert  himself. 
Its  immediate  consequence  was  the  first  organization  of 
a  West-Saxon  Church.  Oswald  and  Kynegils,  united  in  Birinus 
a  triple  relation,  political,  domestic,  and  religious,  con-  Chester. 
curred  in  establishing  Birinus  as  bishop  of  Dorchester. 
From  this  act  may  be  said  to  have  proceeded  in  different 
senses  the  three  episcopates  of  Winchester,  of  Lincoln,  and 
of  Oxford.  The  village  which  we  can  so  easily  visit, 
and  which  has  so  long  a  history  to  redeem  its  present 
insignificance,  thus  holds  a  real  place  in  the  annals  of  the 
Church  of  England.  From  '  Dorcic '  Birinus  went  up  and 
down  among  the  West-Saxons,  that  is,  from  Dorset  to 
Buckinghamshire,  from  Surrey  to  the  Severn,  preaching, 
catechizing,  baptizing,  'calling  many  people  to  the  Lord 
by  his  pious  labours,'  and  '  building  and  dedicating  churches 
which  would  probably  be  mission-stations  ^.'  This  is  Bede's 
summary  of  a  work  as  to  which  he  could  get  no  detailed 
information,  but  which  must  have  had  its  own  incidents 
and  characteristics,  its  own  experiences  of  hope  and 
anxiety,  of  partial  failure  compensated  by  general  advance, 
which,  if  preserved  to  us,  might  have  made  the  conversion 
of  Wessex  as  living  a  fact  to  us  as  that  of  Northumbria. 
As  it  is,  we  cannot  recover  a  single  feature  in  those  mis- 
sionary journeys  of  Birinus :  but  it  is  reasonable  to  think 
that  although  Oxford  as  yet  was  not,  he  would  come  up 
the  valley  to  the  junction  of  our  two  rivers,  find  there 


ought  to  refuse  a  request  to  perform  this  office,  and  'etiam  domini  proprios 
famulos  de  sacro  fonte  suscipiunt.'  So  in  Greg.  Sacrament,  ap.  Muratori, 
Lit.  Rom.  ii.  157:  *Eo  tenente  infantem  a  quo  suscipiendus  est.'  The 
phrase  is  as  old  as  Tertullian  :  'Ter  mergitamur  .  .  .  inde  suscepti,'  &c.  ; 
De  Cor.  Mil.  3.  Cp.  St.  Boniface,  Ep.  40 :  *  Homo  .  .  .  alterius  filium  de 
fonte  .  .  .  elevans,'  &c. 

^  *  Pulcherrimo  prorsus  et  Deo  digno  consortio  ;  *  Bede,  iii.  7.  '  Satis 
perpulchro  spectaculo  ; '  Reginald,  Vit.  Osw.  3. 

2  See  Add.  Notes,  F. 


172  Erconbert  King  of  Kent. 

CHAP.  T.  some  few  '  ceorls '  ready  to  hear  the  name  of  Christ,  and 
perhaps  deposit  'seeds'  which,  a  century  later,  produced 
in  St.  Frideswide's  humble  foundation  the  nucleus  of  the 
priory  and  the  cathedral,  and,  in  another  sense,  of  the 
city  and  probably  of  its  earliest  theological  schools  \ 
But  one  success  Birinus  had,  which  must  have  been  speci- 
ally welcome ;  Cwichelm,  the  son  of  Kynegils,  followed  his 
father's  example  within  the  year:  it  was  just  ten  years 
since  he  had  sent  Eumer  with  the  poisoned  dagger  to  slay 
Edwin.  He  was  baptized  at  Dorchester  in  636 ;  '  and 
that  same  year  he  died^.'  His  name  is  perpetuated  in 
'Cwichelm's  hlaew,'  or  *hill,'  now  Cuckhamsley,  a  height 
crowned  by  trees  at  the  summit  of  the  Berkshire  range, 
which  we  may  see  from  Foxcombe  hill,  or  from  the  Wantage 
road,  beyond  the  turn  to  Cumnor^.  His  son  Cuthred, 
who  like  him  was  a  sub-king  under  Kynegils,  was  baptized 
in  639  by  Birinus,  who  took  him  for  his  godson  ^. 

We  do  not  hear  of  any  relations  being  as  yet  formed 
between  the  mission  in  Wessex  and  the  see  of  Canterbury. 
The  archbishop  does  not  seem  to  have  had  any  com- 
munication with  Birinus,  who  was  doing  so  effectively 
the  work  which  Canterbury  had  never  essayed.  In  Kent 
Erconbert  all  was  tranquil  and  hopeful.  Eadbald,  whose  genuine 
Kent  conversion  had  suflfered  no  relapse,  was  succeeded  in  640  by 
his  son  Erconbert,  whose  Christianity  was  more  definitely 
aggressive  upon  heathenism  ^  He  was  the  first  English 
king  who  used  his  royal  authority  for  the  utter  destruction 

*  See  Parker's  Early  Hist,  of  Oxford,  pp.  106,  119.  The  university  grew 
into  life  subsequently  to  such  unorganized  schools.  Cp.  Rashdall,  Univer- 
sities of  Europe  in  M.  Ages,  ii.  327-339. 

2  Chron.  a.  636.  Malmesbury  says  he  was  'admonished  by  illness,* 
Gest.  Reg.  i.  22. 

3  Parker,  p.  149.  It  is  near  West  Ilsley.  In  icx)6,  says  the  Chronicle, 
the  Danes  made  good  their  boast  that  they  would  reach  Cmchelm's 
'  hlaew,'  and  get  to  their  ships  again.  See  Freeman,  i.  332.  A  *  hlaew  ' 
(see  Taylor's  Words  and  Places,  p.  212)  frequently  perpetuated  the 
memory  of  celebrated  personages ;  Chron.  Abingd.  ii.  483,  and  '  Osla- 
feshlau '  in  Kemble's  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  283. 

*  Chron.  a.  639.  Another  case  in  which  the  bishop  who  baptized  acted 
also  as  godfather  is  Cadwalla's  in  689  ;  Bede,  v.  7  ;  and  see  Greg.  Tur. 
H.  Fr.  V.  23,  vi.  27. 

^  Bede,  iii.  8  :  '  Hie  primus  regum  Anglorum,*  &c. 


Death  of  Sigehert.  173 

of  idols  -^j  and  the  enforcement  of  the  Lenten  fast ;  and  he  chap.  v. 
appointed  fitting  penalties  for  disobedience  to  this  law. 
He  married  Sexburga,  the  eldest  daughter  of  Anna  king 
of  the  East-Anglians '-,  who  had  succeeded  to  that  throne 
in  635  under  strangely  tragical  circumstances^.  Egric, 
who  having  been  a  sub-king  in  East-Anglia,  had  become 
sole  king  on  his  kinsman  Sigebert's  abdication,  was  menaced 
with  invasion  by  Penda.  His  people,  knowing  themselves 
to  be  no  match  for  the  Mercians,  and  remembering  the 
ex-king's  former  renown  as  a  leader,  besought  him  to  come 
forth  from  his  cell  and  aid  them  in  the  fight.  He  refused ; 
whereupon,  hoping  that  his  mere  presence  might  inspirit 
the  national  forces*,  they  actually  dragged  him  to  the 
battle-field.  There  he  stood,  but,  'not  unmindful  of  his 
profession-^,'  or  as  we  may  think,  in  his  overstrained 
scrupulosity,  he  would  hold  nothing  but  a  wand.  He  and 
Egric  were  both  slain,  and  the  East-Anglians  utterly 
routed,  and  Fursey,  who  had  adopted  the  hermit  life,  was 
scared  by  '  the  invasion  of  the  heathen '  into  leaving  East- 
Anglia  for  Gaul  ^.  Anna,  now  chosen  king,  was  son  of  Anna 
Eni  and  nephew  of  Redwald,  and  '  a  very  good  man,'  says  the^last- 
Bede,  '  and  the  parent  of  very  good  children,'  and  '  happy  Angiians. 
in  a  good  and  holy  progeny ; '  '  a  man,'  as  he  elsewhere 
says, '  truly  religious,  and  altogether  excellent  in  mind  and 
conduct"^.'  In  fact,  he  is  chiefiy  remarkable  on  account 
of  the  zeal  for  monasticism  shown  personally  by  princesses 

^  Gregory  had  urged  it  ;  but  Ethelbert  and  Eadbald  had  not  ventured 
on  such  a  method. 

"^  Bede,  1.  c.  :  '  Cujus  regis  filia  major,*  &c.     Properly,  Sexburh. 

3  Bede,  iii.  i8. 

*  '  Sperantes  minus  animos  militum  trepidare  ;*  Bede,  1.  c 

'  Yet,  in  the  preceding  century,  Irish  ecclesiastics  had  repeatedly 
taken  part  in  warfare  ;  Eeeves's  Adamnan,  p.  Ixxvii.  Gregory  of  Tours 
censures  two  Prankish  bishops,  Salonius  and  Sagittarius,  for  doing  so  ; 
H.  Fr.  iv.  43  :  and  ib.  v.  21,  'tanquam  unus  ex  laicis  accincti  arma,*  &c. 
For  two  warrior  bishops  of  Sherborne,  see  Chron.  a.  845,  871  (in  the  Danish 
wars\ 

^  He  was  well  received  by  Clovis  II  of  Neustria,  or  Erchinwald  his 
'patrician'  (  =  mayor  of  the  palace\  built  another  monastery  at  Lagny, 
and  died  soon  afterwards  in  650. 

"^  Bede,  iii.  18  and  7  ;  iv.  19.  He  enlarged  and  enriched  the  monastery 
of  Burgh'castlo  ;  iii.  19. 


174  The  Family  of  King  Anna, 

of  his  house.  'At  that  time  there  were  not  many  mon- 
asteries among  the  English ;  and  therefore  many  used 
to  go  over  from  Britain  to  the  monasteries  of  the  Franks 
or  Gaul  ^,  for  the  sake  of  monastic  life, — and  also  to  send 
their  daughters  to  the  same  to  be  instructed  and  united  to 
their  Heavenly  Bridegroom,  especially  at  Brige,'  or  Brie, 
near  Meaux,  where  an  abbess,  of  noble  Burgundian  birth, 
named  Fara  had  built  a  convent,  and  at  Gale,  or  Ghelles, 
near  Paris,  and  Andilegum,  or  Andely,  near  Rouen.  Such 
is  Bede's  statement^.  Anna's  sister-in-law  Hereswid^ 
herself  became  a  nun  at  Ghelles:  her  sister,  the  famous 
St.  Hilda,  spent  a  year  in  East-Anglia  with  the  hope  of 
'  imitating  her  example.'  Anna's  step-daughter,  Ssethryd  *, 
actually  did  so.  Anna  himself  had  four  daughters :  Sex- 
burga,  wife  of  Erconbert,  who  after  surviving  her  husband, 
and  even  acting  as  regent,  became  abbess  of  a  convent 
which  she  had  founded  in  the  Isle  of  Sheppey,  and  after- 
wards first  a  simple  nun  and  then  abbess  at  Ely^; 
Ethelberga,  who  became  abbess  of  Brie^;  a  third  whose 
enthusiasm  for  conventual  life  had  important  results  in 
Northumbrian  Ghurch  history,  and  whose  name  still  stands 
in  our  calendar  as  St.  Etheldred ''^j  the  foundress  of  the 

^  For  monasteries  founded  in  Gaul  early  in  the  sixth  century,  see 
Mabillon,  Ann.  Bened.  i.  293,  295,  304,  310.  Among  those  who  resorted 
to  them  was  St.  Botulf. 

2  Bede,  iii.  8  :  '  Nam  eo  tempore,*  &c.  Fara,  or  Burgundofara,  had 
been  '  dedicated'  in  her  infancy  by  Columban,  against  her  father's  wish. 
The  impetuous  Irishman  would  think  little  of  parental  authority  in  such 
a  ease.  She  persisted  in  refusing  to  be  married :  she  fled  to  a  church, 
and  said  she  would  rather  die  on  its  floor  than  consent.  Her  father 
yielded  :  she  founded  a  monastery  (famous  as  Faremoustier)  on  some 
land  of  his  in  Brie,  near  Meaux.  One  of  her  nuns,  Wilsinda,  was  a  Saxon. 
She  died  about  655  (Mabillon,  Ann.  Bened.  i.  304,  356). 

^  Compare  Bede,  iv.  23,  Hereswid,  says  Bede,  was  mother  of  king 
Aldwulf ;  and  in  the  appendix  to  Florence  she  accordingly  appears  as 
wife  of  Anna's  brother  and  successor  Ethelhere,  father  of  Aldwulf  (Flor, 
i.  249).  She  was  grandniece  of  Edwin.  Thoma^  of  Ely  is  wrong  in 
calling  Aldwulf  son  of  Anna  ;  Hist.  El.  (Angl.  Sac.  i.  595). 

*  Bede,  iii.  8.  '  Ssetrudis,'  Ann.  Bened.  i.  434.  She  preceded  Ethel- 
berga as  abbess. 

'-'  See  Bede,  iv.  19.     *  Sancta  Sexburga,'  Florence,  a.  640. 

^  Anna's  '  filia  naturalis,'  step-daughter. 

'  Bede,  iv.  19.  Tho.  El.  Hist.  Eliens.  (Angl.  Sac.  i.  597).  The  name 
means  '  noble  troop  ' ;  Skeat,  Etym.  Diet. 


Battle  of  Maserfield.  175 

famous  church  of  Ely ;  and  a  fourth,  Witberga,  who  lived  chap.  v. 
as  a  recluse  at  Dereham  ^.  Ercongota,  daughter  of  Ercon- 
bert  and  Sexburga,  became  a  nun  at  Brie,  and  is  named 
in  the  Chronicle  as  a  '  wondrous  person/  because  of  a  vision 
related  by  Bede,  in  which  she  was  described  as  'that 
golden  coin  which  had  come  thither  out  of  Kent  2.'  Her 
sister  Ermenild,  after  being  queen  of  the  Mercians,  followed 
the  family  custom,  received  the  veil  under  her  mother 
at  Sheppey,  and  succeeded  her  at  Ely  ^. 

Erconbert  had  been  reigning  two  years  in  Kent,  and 
Anna  six  years  in  East-Anglia,  when  a  dire  calamity 
befell  the  Northumbrian  realm  and  Church.  Like  that 
'tender-hearted'  and  blameless  king  of  Judah,  of  whom 
his  life  reminds  us,  Oswald  fell  in  battle  with  the  heathen. 
He  was  involved  in  a  war  with  Penda  and  '  the  South-  Battle  of 
humbrians  ^,  to  whom  it  was  naturally  of  importance  to  re-  field, 
cover  the  advantage  temporarily  gained  at  Hatfield.  He  had, 
it  appears,  reconquered  the  district  of  Lindsey  from  the 
Mercian :  but  on  the  5th  of  August,  642,  he  was  surprised 
by  his  enemy  at  a  place  named  Maserfield  ^,  which  the 
Cambrian  Annals  call  Cocboy,  and  which  may  be  Coedway, 
near  the  Shropshire  town  which  still  commemorates  Oswald 
in   its  name   of  Oswestry  ^     It  was,  in  a  certain   sense, 

^  Act.  SS.  Bened.  ii.  740 ;  Chron.  a.  797. 

2  Bede,  iii.  8  :  *  Aureum  illud  numisma  quod  eo  de  Cantia  venerat.' 

^  Act.  SS.  Ben.  ii.  756.  It  may  be  well  to  remember  that  Erconbert 
had  a  brother,  Ermenred,  as  well  as  a  sister,  St.  Eanswith.  Ermenred, 
who  was  a  sub-king,  had  two  sons,  Ethelred  and  Ethelbert  (both  cruelly- 
murdered),  and  four  daughters,  Ermenburg  or  Domneva,  wife  of  Merewald 
sub-king  of  the  West-Mercians,  another  Ermenburg,  Etheldrith,  and 
Ermengith  (Florence,  App,  Chron.  i.  259). 

*  Chron.  a.  642.  Tighernach  wrongly  dates  it  in  639,  just  as  he  dates 
the  defeat  of  Edwin  in  631,  and  Oswald's  victory  over  '  Cathlon'  in  632. 

^  Bede,  iii.  9.  Keginald  fixes  it  at  half-a-mile  from  Offa's  Dyke,  and 
seven  miles  from  Shrewsbury  ;  and  says  that  a  church  called  '  White 
Church  '  (as  being  of  stone)  was  afterwards  erected  there.  Vit.  Osw.  c.  14 
(Sim.  Op.  i.  352).  For  Offa's  Dyke,  which  ran  'from  the  mouth  of  the 
Wye  to  the  estuary  of  the  Dee,'  see  Guest,  Orig.  Celt.  ii.  273, 

'  '  Id  est,  Oswald!  arborem  ; '  Giraldus,  Itin.  Camb.  ii.  12.  In  Welsh, 
Cross-Oswald.  Reginald  tells  how  a  large  bird  carried  off  the  slain  king's 
right  arm  from  the  stake  (see  below)  to  an  old  ash-tree,  which  thereafter 
put  forth  fresh  leaves,  and  was  still  revered  as  '  St.  Oswald's  tree ' ;  Vit. 
Osw,  c.  17.    Coed  =  wood;  cp.  Cotswold. 


176  Death  of  Oswald, 

CHAP.  V.  another  Hatfield.  Bede  tells  us  how  the  saintly  successor 
of  Edwin,  seeing  death  inevitable,  'ended  his  life  with 
prayer  for  the  souls  of  his  men  ^ ; '  and  he  quotes  a  saying, 
the  point  of  which  may  be  best  given  in  a  paraphrase :  — 

'  For   bodies  whatsoe'er  betide, 

On  souls,  0  God,  have  mercy  ! '  cried 

King  Oswald,  as  he  fell  and  died. 

Another  saying,  probably  a  fragment  of  a  ballad,  is  pre- 
served in  a  later  chronicle,  to  the  effect  that  'Maserfield 
was  whitened  o'er  with  bones  of  holy  men  ^.'  Oswald  was 
only  in  his  thirty-eighth  year.  The  ferocious  Mercian  who 
had  thus  added  his  name  to  a  growing  list  of  princel}^ 
victims  exposed  the  head  and  arms  of  the  slain  monarch 
on  wooden  stakes  ^ :  but  they  were  rescued  the  next  year, 
and  carried  into  Northumbria.  The  hands  were  kept  in 
a  silver  box,  at  St.  Peter's  church  on  the  summit  of  the 
rock  of  Bamborough  ^ :  the  head  on  which  the  death-blow 
had  descended  was  interred  by  Aidan — one  can  well 
imagine  with  what  intensity  of  sorrow — at  Lindisfarne, — 
and  removed  in  875  within  the  coffin  of  St.  Cuthbert  ^ : 
hence  the  common  representation  of  that  saint, — visible, 
for  instance,  in  a  window  of  Oxford  cathedral,  and  on  the 
north  side  of  the  steeple  of  St.  Mary's, — as  holding  the  head 
of  St.  Oswald  in  his  hands.  About  thirty  years  after  the 
battle   of   Maserfield,   his   niece   Osthryd^,   then   wife   to 

^  Bede,  iii.  12  ;  cp.  iv.  14.  See  Churton,  E.  E.  Ch.  p.  75.  Green 
mistakes  this,  as  if  he  had  been  praying  for  his  slayers  ;  Making  of  Engl, 
p.  294. 

^  Hen.  Hunt.  iii.  39. 

^  Bede,  iii.  12  :  *  Porro  caput  et  manus,'  &c.  Bede  tells  this  as  if  by  an 
after-thought. 

*  Bede,  iii.  6  ;  Sim.  Danelm.  Hist.  Reg.  c.  48  (Op.  i.  45). 

^  Malmesb.  Gest.  Pontif.  iii.  134,  says  that  when  (in  1104)  the  tomb  of 
Cuthbert  was  opened  in  Durham  cathedral,  '  the  head  of  Oswald,  king 
and  martyr,  was  found  between  his  arms.'  See  Reginald's  minute  de- 
scription of  the  head,  as  it  was  preserved  in  a  purple  bag  '  beside  the  head 
of  Cuthbert,'  c.  51.  He  was  told  that  it  had  for  a  time  been  taken  away 
to  Bamborough,  and  thence,  by  a  stratagem,  brought  back  to  Lindisfarne  ; 
c.  49.  A  similar  discovery  was  made  in  1827  ;  Handbook  to  North. 
Cathedrals,  ii.  301. 

•  She  imbibed  her  brother  Egfrid's  hostility  to  Wilfrid.  She  was 
killed  by  Mercian  nobles,  a.  697  ;  Bede,  v.  24. 


Reverence  for  his  sanctity,  177 

a  son  and  successor  of  Penda,  removed  '  the  bones  of  her  chap,  v, 
uncle'  to  the  great  Lincolnshire  monastery  of  Bardney; 
where  the  Mercian  monks  afterwards  tokP  how  in  their 
long-standing  animosity '  against  the  Northumbrian  who 
had  'gained  the  dominion  over  them/  they  refused  to 
harbour  his  remains,  'although  they  knew  him  to  be  a 
saint/  and  so  left  the  wain  which  had  arrived  with  them 
in  the  evening  to  stand  outside  their  doors,  with  a  covering 
spread  over  it:  how,  all  that  night,  they  saw  a  pillar  of 
light  blazing  heavenward  above  the  wain,  conspicuous  to 
nearly  all  the  province  of  Lindsey^:  how  in  the  morning 
they  eagerly  threw  open  the  gate,  carried  in  the  bones 
with  all  reverence,  washed  them,  placed  them  in  a  chest, 
and  hung  up  over  it  the  gold  and  purple  banner  which  had 
waved  in  battle  before  the  holy  king  ^.  We  cannot  wonder 
that,  in  such  an  age,  the  very  spot  where  he  had  fallen 
seemed  '  greener  and  fairer '  than  the  ground  adjacent,  or 
that  wondrous  virtues  were  ascribed  to  its  dust,  to  that 
of  the  floor  on  which  had  been  poured  out  the  water  used 
in  washing  the  relics,  or  to  a  splinter  of  the  stake  to  which 
the  head  had  been  affixed  * ;  that  a  little  boy  in  Bardney 
monastery  was  said  to  have  been  cured  of  the  fen-country 
ague  by  sitting  close  to  the  saint's  tomb '' ;  that  a  North- 

^  Bede,  iii.  ii.  Florence  says  that  Etlielred,  king  of  the  Mercians, 
Osthryd's  husband,  '  had  himself  built '  this  monastery,  in  which  he 
aftei*wards  became  monk  and  abbot  (on  a.  716).  Tradition  said  that  it 
contained  300  monks  ;  Mon.  Anglic,  i.  628.  When  the  house,  after  long 
desolation,  was  restored  in  the  eleventh  century,  it  was  dedicated  to 
SS.  Peter  and  Paul,  and  '  St.  Oswald,  king  and  martyr' ;  ib. 

*  An  abbess,  Ethelhild,  surviving  when  Bede  wrote,  told  queen  Osthryd 
that  she  had  seen  this  light,  'ad  caelum  usque  altam.'  Alcuin  de  Pontif. 
Ebor.  364,  '  ad  fastigia  caeli.'     Malmesbury,  '  lucernam  de  caelo.' 

^  In  909,  says  the  Chronicle,  St.  Oswald's  body  was  removed  from 
Bardney  into  Mercia  (properly  so  called).  So  Florence,  a.  910.  It  was 
interred  at  Gloucester.  See  Alb.  Butler,  Aug.  5  ;  Monast.  Angl.  vi.  82. 
Only  three  small  bones  remained  at  Bardney;  Reginald,  c.  43. 

*  Bede,  iii.  10,  11,  13.  The  last  anecdote  was  told  by  Willibrord,  who, 
while  staying  in  Ireland,  had  put  the  splinter  into  water  which  he  gave  to 
a  plague-stricken  Irish  scholar.  It  is  painful  to  observe  that  the  terrified 
sinner's  hope  of  divine  pardon  is  based  on  physical  contact  with  any  relic 
of  Oswald. 

^  Bede,  iii.  12.  This  was  told  to  Bede  by  a  monk,  when  the  boy  had 
grown  up  into  a  youth,  and  was  still  dwelling  in  the  monastery. 

3^ 


178 


Anxiety  caused  by  his  death. 


Impor- 
tance of 
Northum 
bria. 


CHAP.  V.  umbrian  community  of  monks  in  Sussex  believed  an 
epidemic  to  have  been  stayed  by  the  intercession  of  that 
*king,  beloved  of  God/  whose  dying  prayer  might  be 
available  for  men  of  his  race,  though  dwelling  far  from 
home  ^ ;  or  that  a  great  missionary,  Willibrord  archbishop 
of  the  Frisians,  spoke  of  miracles  wrought,  even  in  that 
distant  province,  in  presence  of  some  relics  of  St.  Oswald  ^. 
The  collect  prescribed,  in  the  Sarum  rite,  for  the  5th  of 
August,  referred  to  'the  joyous  and  blessed  gladness' 
w^hich  had  been  associated  with  that  day  by  his  '  passion ' : 
and  when  we  remember  the  issues  at  stake  in  his  contest 
with  Penda,  we  may  think  it  not  too  much  to  say  with 
a  foreign  historian  of  ancient  England^,  that  as  'his  life 
was  distinguished '  at  once  by  '  activity '  and  by  a  '  spirit 
of  fervent  Christian  beneficence,'  so  'his  Christian  merits 
and  his  martyrdom  made  him  a  hero  of  the  Christian  world.' 
The  history  of  the  Church  in  Northumbria  during  the 
larger  part  of  the  seventh  century  is  conspicuously  the 
backbone  of  the  history  of  the  Church  in  England.  It  is 
striking  to  see  how  the  region  which  was  first  to  come 
before  St.  Gregory's  thoughts  in  regard  to  an  English 
mission,  and  yet,  for  some  thirty  years,  was  inaccessible  to 
missionary  attempts,  no  sooner  in  any  sense  accepted  Chris- 
tianity than  it  concentrated  into  itself  the  chief  interest  of 
the  great  drama  of  national  conversion  ;  this  being  due,  no 
doubt,  in  part,  to  the  relative  scantiness  of  our  information 
as  to  other  districts,  but  also  largely  to  the  force  and  im- 
pressiveness  of  the  characters  that  walk  the  Northumbrian 
stage.  We  cannot  help  making  Northumbria  the  main  line 
of  our  subject,  towards  which  any  record  of  Church  life  in 
Kent,  or  Wessex,  or  elsewhere,  may  naturally  radiate.  And 
thus,  the  tragedy  of  Maserfield  must  have  sent  a  thrill  of 
grief  and  alarm  through  every  Christian  realm,  whatever 
might  be  its  political  bearing  towards' the  kingdom  which 

^  *  Pro  suae  gentis  advenis  ; '  Bede,  iv.  14.  There  is  a  vision  of  SS.  Peter 
and  Paul  in  this  story,  and  an  order  to  celebrate  St.  Oswald's  anniversary 
by  mass  and  communion.  Acca,  bishop  of  Hexham,  is  Bede's  authority 
here.     The  monastery  was  Wilfrid's,  at  Selsey. 

^  Bede,  iii.  13  :  *  Denique  reverentissimus,'  &c. 

'  Lappenberg,  i.  i6i.    '  Sancti  sanguinis  effusionem,'  Miss.  Ebor.,  Aug.  5. 


Oswy^  King  of  Bernicia.  179 

had  lost  Oswald.  We  can  imagine  how  the  tidings  would  c"ap.  v. 
be  received  in  Kent ;  how  Paulinus,  safe  in  Rochester,  and 
Ethelburga  in  her  minster  at  Lyminge^,  would  think  of 
Hatfield,  and  pray  for  the  soul  of  another  Edwin  ;  how  in 
East-Anglia,  both  king  and  bishop  would  feel  renewed  mis- 
givings at  a  fresh  victory  of  the  arms  that  had  struck  down 
Sigebert  and  Egric ;  how  among  our  own  Oxfordshire 
valleys,  as  yet  outside  the  Mercian  limits,  priests  and 
converts  would  tremble  for  new-built  churches,  and  mourn 
for  the  generous  over-lord  who  had  come  among  them  as 
sponsor  for  their  king.  Why  was  such  a  prop  of  the  cause 
removed  %  Did  it  mean  that,  after  all,  the  work  would  be 
undone,  that  a  heathen  tempest  would  spread  from  '  the 
Wall '  to  the  Channel,  and  root  out  the  worship  of  Christ 
wherever  it  had  been  planted  ?  Such  questions  might  be 
a  trial  to  faith  in  many  a  South-country  Church  settle- 
ment :  what  must  the  blow  have  been  to  Christians  in 
Bernicia  and  Deira  ? 

We  may  say,  in  Bernicia  and  in  Deira ;  for,  to  add  to  Oswy, 
the  difficulties  and  perils  of  the  crisis,  the  two  realms,  bernicia. 
so  thoroughly  welded  together  by  a  hero  who  united  the 
royal  blood  of  both,  were  soon  again  to  be  shaken  apart ; 
Oswiu,  or  Oswy,  the  younger  brother  of  Oswald,  now  about 
thirty  years  old,  succeeding  to  the  royalty  of  Bernicia,  but 
failing  to  establish  his  hold  on  Deira,  which  had  a  strong 
leaning  to  the  house  of  Ella,  and  in  643,  according  to  Bede's 
reckoning  ^,  acknowledged  the  royal  claims  of  Oswin,  son  of 
the  unhappy  Osric  '^.  Oswy  was  fain  to  agree  to  this  parti- 
tion :  indeed,  he  had  for  some  time  enough  work  in  keeping 

^  It  is  interesting  to  observe  that  the  little  church  of  Paddlesworth, 
occupying  the  highest  ground  in  Kent,  642  feet  above  the  sea,  was  of  old 
a  dependency  of  Lyminge,  and  is  dedicated  to  St.  Oswald.  In  Yorkshire 
he  was  specially  honoured  at  Oswaldkirk  near  Helmsley,  at  Nostel  Priory 
near  Wakefield,  at  Methley,  Fiky,  and  Flamborough  ;  in  Westmoreland 
at  Grasmere  ;  at  Chester,  the  south  transept  of  St.  Werburga's  (the  pre- 
sent cathedral),  was  long  used  as  St.  Oswald's  parish  church. 

^  Bede  says,  iii.  14,  that  Oswin  reigned  between  eight  and  nine  years ; 
and  he  died  in  August,  651.  The  date  of  644,  given  by  the  Chronicler  for 
his  accession,  is  therefore  a  year  too  late. 

^  A  desire  to  strengthen  his  interest  in  Deira  led  him  to  marry  Eanfled, 
the  daughter  of  Edwin;  Bede,  iii.  15. 

N  2 


i8o  Penda  invades  Northumbria, 

CHAP.  V.  the  lands  beyond  the  Tees,  whither  Penda,  now  more  than 
sixty,  but  as  energetic  and  as  ruthless  as  after  the  battle  of 
Hatfield,  had  penetrated  as  if  he  meant  to  destroy  Northum- 
brian independence  by  the  one  stroke  of  taking  Bam- 
borough^.  We  seem  to  see  the  grim  invader  first  trying 
to  storm  the  city,  then  pulling  down  the  wooden  huts  of 
neighbouring  hamlets,  piling  the  materials  ^  in  a  huge  mass 
close  to  the  wall,  and  finally  taking  advantage  of  a  south- 

Aidan  and  west  wind  to  Set  tlie  timber  on  fire.  And  then  Bede  shows 
a.  ^g  ^Y^^  figure  of  Aidan  in  his  place  of  '  retreat '  on  the  Fame 
island,  nearly  two  miles  off":  he  looks  up,  and  sees  fire  and 
smoke  carried  by  the  wind  high  above  the  city  wall, 
which  was  evidently  of  timber  :  he  lifts  up  his  eyes  and 
hands  in  supplication  ^ :  '  See,  Lord,  what  harm  Penda  is 
doing ! '  Immediately  the  wind  shifts,  drives  back  the 
flames,  scorching  some  of  Penda's  men  and  scaring  all  of 
them,  '  so  that  they  gave  up  attacking  a  city  which  they 
understood  to  be  divinely  protected.'  In  effect,  Penda  did 
suspend,  soon  afterwards,  the  attempt  to  conquer  Northum- 
bria :  he  re-annexed  Lindsey  to  Mercia,  and  Church  history 
is  concerned  in  his  next  attack  on  Wessex,  where  the  eldest 
of  the  three  royal  proselytes  of  Birinus  survived  his  sponsor 
and  son-in-law  about  a  year,  dying  in  643,  the  thirty-second 
year  of  his  reign  ^.  Cwichelm,  as  we  have  seen,  had  died 
before  his  father;  and  the  crown  passed,  not  to  his  son 
Cuthred,  but,  as  was  often  the  case  in  Old-English  kingdoms, 

Kenwalch.  to  his  brother  ^  Kenwalch  or  Coinwalch,  the  second  son  of 
Kynegils,  probably  a  man  of  ripe  years  and  full  strength, 
but  firmly  set  against  the  creed  of  his  father  and  his 
nephew  ^.  Naturally  he  would  speak  with  bitter  scorn  of 
the  new  lore  that  the  foreign  priests  had  brought  in  to  turn 
the  sons  of  Woden  into  weaklings :  he  would  have  nought 

^  Bede,  iii.  i6:  *  Pervenit  ad  urbem  regiam,  quae  ex  Bebbae  quondam 
reginae  vocabulo  cognominatur.'  Oswy,  however,  must  have  gained  some 
advantage  over  Penda  in  Mercia  during  his  first  year;  see  Bede,  iii.  12. 

*  *  Trabium,  tignorum,  parietum  virgeorum,  et  tecti  fenei,'  &c. 

2  *  Fertur,'  says  Bode,  on  this.  *  A.-S.  Chron.  a.  643,  cp.  61  r. 

^  See  Freeman,  i.  108,  that  minors  were  often  passed  by  in  favour  of 
uncles. 

*  Bede,  iii.  7  :  *  Defuncto  autem  et  rege,'  &c. 


Exile  and  conversion  of  Kenwalch.       i8i 

to  do  with  Birinus,  who  had  wrought  scathe  enough  to  the  chap.  r. 
house  of  Cerdic  by  womanish  words  and  outlandish  rites- 
Those  must  have  been  anxious  days  at  Dorchester.  But 
ere  long  Kenwalch,  in  the  pride  of  newly-acquired  kingship, 
was  bold  enough  to  divorce  the  sister  of  Penda,  whom  he 
had  wedded,  no  doubt  from  political  considerations,  and  to 
take  another  wife^.  Penda  seized  the  occasion,  marched 
straight  into  Wessex,  and  drove  out  Kenwalch  in  645.  So 
it  was,  as  Bede  comments,  that  the  prince  '  who  had  refused 
to  receive  the  faith  and  mysteries  of  the  heavenly  kingdom, 
not  long  afterwards  lost  the  power  even  of  the  earthly 
kingdom  ^ ; '  but  he  was  to  furnish  another  instance  of  the 
old  rhyming  Greek  proverb,  '  Tribulation,  education  -l'  He 
found  shelter  in  East-Anglia ;  and  while  living  '  for  three 
years  in  exile,  he  acknowledged  and  accepted  the  true 
belief^.'  He  saw  in  Anna's  household  a  royal  family 
simply  and  thoroughly  Christian,  believing  absolutely  in 
the  new  faith,  and  leading  pure  and  worthy  lives  under  its 
influence.  Felix,  no  doubt,  found  opportunities  of  touching 
and  opening  the  heart  of  the  discrowned  fugitive :  and  no 
episcopal  work  that  he  had  done  since  he  came  to  Sigebert 
would  be  more  utterly  'happy'  than  the  baptizing  of 
Kenwalch  in  646  ^.  The  convert  may  have  been  present,  Death  of 
with  Anna,  at  the  deathbed  of  the  bishop,  whose  labours  as 
an  evangelizer,  an  educator,  and  a  Church  ruler,  were  closed 
on  the  8th  of  March,  647  ^.  St.  Felix,  as  he  was  fittingly 
called  in  after-ages,  was  buried  in  his  own  city  of  Dunwich  '^ : 
and  it  is  interesting  to  find  the  memory  of  the  apostle  of 
East-Anglia  preserved  in  the  name  not  only  of  Felixstowe 
to  the  south-east  of  Ipswich,  but  also  of  a  Yorkshire  village, 
far  away  in  the  north,  Feliskirk,  near  Thirsk.  His  deacon 
Thomas,  a  native  of  the  '  Gyrvian '  or  '  Fen '  district  ^,  was 

^  Seaxburh  or  Sexburga,  who  reigned  after  him  ;  Chron.  a.  672. 
"^  '  Qui  et  ficlem  et  sacramenta,'  &c.  ;  Bede,  iii.  7.     See  p.  126. 
3  nae-qfxaTa,  fiaOrifiaTa,  Herod.  i.  207.     Cp.  Malmesb.  G.  R.  i.  19. 

*  Bede,  iii.  7  :   *  Apud  quern  triennio  exsulans,'  &c. 
^  Chronicle,  and  Florence  a.  646. 

^  See  Bede,  ii.  15  ;  iii.  20 ;  Maskell,  Mon.  Rit.  iii.  214. 

"*  He  was  ultimately  transferred  to  Ramsey  ;  Malm.  G.  Pontif.  iii.  74^ 

*  The  northern   Gyrvii  held  South  Lincolnshire,  and  parts  of  Cam- 


i82  Kenwalch  regains  his  crown, 

CHAP.  V.  chosen  to  fill  his  place,  and  was  consecrated  by  Honorius, 
of  Canterbury :  he  ranks  second  of  native  English  bishops, 
the  first  being  the  Kentishman  ^  Ithamar,  whom  Honorius 
had  consecrated  in  644  to  succeed  Paulinus,  when  the  latter 
had  been  laid  to  rest  in  the  church  of  St.  Andrew,  '  which 
king  Ethelbert  had  built  from  its  foundation  in  the  city  of 
Hrof  V 
Restora-  In  648,  Kenwalcli  was  enabled,  mainly  by  the  help  of  his 
Kenwalch.  nephew  Cuthred,  to  return  into  Wessex.  Once  more  a  king, 
he  did  not  fall  back  from  the  promises  made  at  his  East- 
Anglian  baptism.  He  showed  his  gratitude  to  Cuthred  by 
giving  him  three  thousand  hydes  ^ — each  hyde  being,  in 
idea,  an  amount  of  land  sufficient  for  one  family — about 
Ashdown  in  Berkshire,  east  of  '  Cwichelm's-law,'  the  scene 
of  the  defeat  of  the  Danes  by  Ethelred  and  Alfred  in  871. 
He  showed  his  religious  thankfulness  by  forthwith  ordering 
the  erection  of  a  church  in  the  royal  city  of  Winchester  *  : 

bridgeshire  and  Northamptonshire.  The  southern  Gyrvii  dwelt  in  South 
Cambridgeshire. 

^  '  But,*  says  Bede,  'equal  to  his  predecessors  in  conduct  and  learning; ' 
iii.  14.  This  is  paraphrased  by  Malmesbury,  Gest.  Pontif.  i.  72,  *in  quo 
nihil  perfectae  sanctitatis  .  .  .  nihil  eleganfiae  Romanae  .  .  .  minus  deside- 
rares.' 

^  Bede,  iii.  14.  '  Secretarium '  usually  means  a  room  or  building  used 
for  ecclesiastical  business  ;  here,  and  in  ii.  i,  iii.  26,  it  has  the  sense  of 
'  sacristy.'  Paulinus  had  been  a  bishop  rather  more  than  nineteen  years. 
According  to  the  Glastonbury  traditions,  he  had  visited  that  sacred  place, 
and.it  was  he  who  covered  the  church  of  wreathed  osiers  (above,  p.  11) 
with  wood  and  lead  ;  Malmesb.  de  Antiq.  Glaston."  in  Gale,  i.  300.  But 
this  is  probably  a  legend.  Churches  are  dedicated  to  his  memory  at 
Crayford  and  Paul's  Cray  in  Kent.  Compare  p.  136.  Rochester  Cathedral 
contains  his  grave.  See  Cod.  Diplom.  i.  183  {No,  152) :  *  Hrofescester  ubi 
beatus  Paulinus  jpansat' 

^  Chron.  a.  648.  See  Kemble,  i.  92,  487  ff.,  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  83 
(or  74,  ed.  i)  on  '  the  vexed  question  of  its  extent.'  Bede  uses  '  familia  ' 
to  express  it :  e.  g.  Thanet  is  of  600  familiae,  i.  25 ;  Hilda's  land  at  Whitby 
is  of  10  familiae,  iii.  24;  her  former  property  on  the  Wear  had  been  of 
one,  iv.  23  ;  Sussex  contains  7,000,  iv.  13  ;  Selsey,  87,  ib.  ;  the  Isle  of 
Wight,  1,200,  iv.  16  ;  Wilfrid's  land  at  Stamford,'  10,  v.  19  ;  at  Ripon,  30, 
ib. ;  the  abbey-land  at  Wearmouth,  70,  Hist.  Abb.  4  ;  at  Jarrow,  40,  ib.  6. 
Another  Latin  equivalent  is  'cassatus,'  a  'housed*  or  married  man; 
Kemble,  i.  92. 

*  According  to  a  Winchester  story  of  later  date,  this  foundation  had 
been  designed  by  Kynegils.  See  Rudborne,  Hist  Maj.  Wint.  c.  i  (Angl. 
Sac.  i.  189).  In  Annal.  Winton.  (Ann.  Monast.  ii.  5)  Kynegils  is  said  to 
have  made  Kenwalch  swear  by  his  soul,  before  St.  Birinus,  that  he  would 


J 


Learning  in  Ireland,  183 

it  was  hallowed,  says  the  Chronicler,  by  Birinus,  in  honour   chap.  v. 
of  St.  Peter.     This  event,  setting  aside  the  legendary  notices^ 
of  a  British  church  at  Winchester,  profaned  by  the  West- 
Saxons  under  Cerdic,  is  the  opening  of  the  history  of  one 
of  the  most  venerable  of  English  cathedrals.     Birinus  lived 
two  years  longer,  and  died  peacefully  at  Dorchester^,  on 
the  3rd  of  December,  650 ;  and  his  body  lay  in  his  own 
church  until  it  was  removed  to  Winchester  by  his  fourth 
successor  Heddi.     His  first  successor  was  a  Frank  named 
Agilbert,  who  had  been  consecrated,  apparently,  in  Gaul  ^, 
'  but  had  lived  some  time  in  Ireland  for  the  sake  of  study- 
ing the  Scriptures  *.'     Ireland  was  then   pre-eminently  a  Irish 
land  of   contrasts :    amid   a    series    of   '  battles,   burnings,    ^  ^^  ^ 
slaughters  ^,'  which  darken  year  after  year  in  its  native 
records,  there  flourished  a  passionate  love  of  learning  ^,  and 

build  a  church  for  the  bishopric  in  Winchester.  The  oldest  property  of 
the  church  of  Winchester  is  the  estate  at  Chilcombe,  which  it  has  held 
from  the  sixth  century  ;  the  gift  is  ascribed  to  Kynegils.  But  these  tradi- 
tions are  more  than  questionable.  Malmesbury  says  quaintly  that 
Kenwalch  was  '  primus  antecessorum  suorum  '  to  build  a  '  temple '  to  God 
at  Winchester  ;  Gest.  Reg.  i.  19. 

^  See  Rudborne  (a  Winchester  monk  of  the  fifteenth  century)  :  he  begins 
with  king  Lucius,  as  founder  of  the  church  :  tells  how,  after  the  Diocletian 
persecution,  a  second  but  smaller  church  was  built  in  honour  of  *  St.  Ani- 
phibalus,'  and  took  the  name  of  the  Vetus  Coenobium ;  how  Cerdic  turned 
it  into  a  temple  of  Dagon  ;  how  Kynegils  destroyed  the  temple,  and 
assigned  lands  for  a  third  church.  So  Geoffrey  speaks  of  the  British 
church  of  Amphibalus  'intra  Gayntoniam,'  ii.  5.  That  there  had  been 
a  church  at  *  Caergwent '  may  be  taken  as  certain. 

^  Bede,  iii.  7  :  '  Ubi  .  .  .  migravit  ad  Dominum.'  This  phrase  and  its 
equivalents  are  frequent  with  Bede  for  a  holy  death  :  cf.  i.  21  ;  ii.  i  ;  iv. 
23,  30.  Gregory  of  Tours  has  *  migravit  ad  Christum/  Vit.  Patr.  7.  3. 
Cp.  Boniface,  Ep.  12.  Birinus'  name  is  retained  in  'a  spur  of  the 
Chilterns,  in  Ipsden  parish,  called  Berin's  Hill'  (Short  Ace.  of  Borch.,  by 
Rev.  W.  C.  Macfarlane,  p.  17). 

^  He  was  probably  a  '  vacant '  bishop  (o-xoXa^a-j/).  Three  such  signed 
the  acts  of  the  Council  of  Macon  in  585  vMansi,  ix.  959).  Those  Irish 
bishops  who  never  had  sees  were  not  properly  '  vacant,'  though  Todd  so 
regards  them  (St.  Patrick,  p.  45).     See  Bingham,  b.  iv.  2.  14. 

*  Bede,  iii.  7.  About  this  time,  we  are  told,  Gauls  and  Teutons  flocked 
to  Lismore  to  attend  the  lectures  of  Catald ;  Lanigan,  iii.  126. 

^  See  Tighernach  (in  O'Conor's  Rer.  Hibern.  Script,  vol.  ii)  for  recur- 
ring entries  of  'proelium,'  'caedes,'  'jugulatio,*  'combustio,'  between,  e.g., 
A.  D.  618  and  650.  Compare  also  the  Chronicon  Scotorum.  There  had 
also  been  much  religious  declension  early  in  the  century  ;  Todd,  p.  109. 

^  On  the  educational  work  ascribed  to  St.  Patrick,  see  Todd,  p.  506  ff. 


184  Learning  in  Ireland. 

CHAP.  V.  a  generous  eagerness  to  impart  its  benefits, '  without  money 
and  without  price,'  to  foreigners  who  came  in  search  of 
them.  What  Bede  says  of  English-bom  students  in  Ireland 
at  a  slightly  later  time  ^  is  probably  true  of  all  who,  during 
this  period,  resorted  to  Irish  teachers ;  ^  they  went  the  round 
of  the  cells  of  different  masters,  and  the  Irish  readily  gave 
them  daily  food  without  charge,  books  to  read,  and  free 
instruction.'  Camin  of  Iniskeltra  was  at  work  with  numerous 
pupils  in  his  monastery  on  an  island  of  Loughderg:  he  'wrote 
a  commentary  on  the  Psalms  collated  with  the  Hebrew  text  2.' 
The  great  school  which  Carthagh  had  founded  at  Lismore 
was  in  its  glory  ^.  Bangor  in  Ulster  '  was  one  of  the  most 
learned  monasteries  of  the  time*.'  Patristic  learning  had 
been  brought  to  bear  on  the  Easter  question  by  Cummian, 
in  his  letter  to  Seghine  of  Hy  and  others  ^,  who  disapproved 
of  his  departure  from  the  Scotic  system,  and  of  his  successful 
advocacy  of  the  '  Catholic '  Easter  in  South  Ireland  ^.  At 
Clonard  a  theological  college  flourished,  in  which  Aileran 
the  Wise,  whose  tract  on  the  names  of  Christ's  ancestors  is 
still  extant,  was  chief  professor"^.     After  making  use  of 

'  Bede,  iii.  27  ;  cp.  i.  i  ;  v.  9.  See  Goldwin  Smith,  Irish  Hist,  and  Irish 
Character,  p.  28 :  '  The  Irish  Church  .  .  .  received  with  eager  hospitality- 
all  who  desired  to  be  instructed  in  the  Word  of  life.'  Among  the  English- 
men who  studied  in  Ireland  during  the  century  were  Egbert,  Ethelhun, 
Chad,  Willibrord,  Aldfrid  (afterwards  king),  and  Witbert.  See  too  the 
striking  story  of  the  Irish  scholar  who,  while  keenly  interested  in  sacred 
studies,  had  been  utterly  neglectful  of  his  soul's  welfare,  and,  in  fact,  had 
persisted  in  vicious  habits,  &c.  ;  Bede,  iii.  13. 

"^  Lanigan,  iii.  11.  For  Irish  students  cp.  Adamn.  i.  2.  Cp.  Beeves, 
p.  196. 

^  Lanigan,  ii.  353,  says  that  after  Carthagh  died  in  637,  his  *  school,  or 
university,  was  for  a  very  long  time  equal  at  least  to  any  other  in  Ireland.' 

*  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  her  Invaders,  vi.  11 1. 

^  See  above,  p.  112  ;  Lanigan,  ii.  395,  thinks  Cummian  somewhat 
pedantic,  but  observes  that  *  this  tract  shows  how  well  stocked  with  books, 
considering  the  times,  the  Irish  libraries  were,'  &c.  The  date  is  about 
634.  Cummian  was  also,  'in  all  appearance,  author  of.  .  .a  very  learned 
abridgement  of  the  ancient  penitential  canons.' 

*  At  the  Councils  of  Maghlene  and  of  White-field,  630  and  634  ;  p.  112. 

"^  Lanigan,  iii,  54.  Zeal  for  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  grace  was  stirred 
up  in  Ireland  by  some  revival  of  Pelagianizing  ideas,  which  were 
denounced  in  the  letter  of  John  IV,  pope-elect,  and  other  Roman  officials, 
referred  to  above,  p.  112.  The  school  of  Clonard,  according  to  a  hymn 
quoted  in  Todd's  Life  of  St.  Patrick,  p.  98,  '  produced  3,000  disciples '— 


OswiHy  King  of  Deira.  185 

such  opportunities,  Agilbert  came  over  into  Wessex,  and   chap.  v. 
offered  his  aid,  as  a  bishop,  to  the  West-Saxon  king,  who  f^^^^^^^^ 
'  seeing  him  to  be  learned  and  energetic/  was  glad  enough 
to  establish  him  at  Dorchester. 

We  must  now  return  to  the  North.  While  Kenwalch 
was  passing  through  the  phases  of  headstrong  pride  and 
salutary  humiliation,  the  Christians  of  Deira  had  before 
them  a  royal  example  of  singular  loveliness.  The  character  St.  Oswin. 
of  King  Oswin  is  one  of  Bede's  best  portraits.  In  personal 
appearance  tall  and  handsome,  kindly  in  address,  open- 
handed  to  gentle  and  simple  \  and  withal  eminent  for 
piety,  he  won  the  love  of  all  by  '  the  royal  dignity  of  his 
mind,  his  countenance,  his  conduct,'  so  that  from  almost 
every  province  men  of  noblest  birth  flocked  together  to 
be  '  thanes '  in  the  hall  of  Oswin  of  Deira.  Among  all  the 
graces  of  character  which  marked  him  out  as  under  'a 
special  benediction,'  Bede  selects  his  humility  as  the  chief, 
and  illustrates  it  by  one  sufficient  example.  The  bishop  of 
Lindisfarne,  while  visiting  the  southern  part  of  his  huge 
diocese,  became  naturally  intimate  with  a  prince  who  would 
recall  to  him  his  beloved  Oswald.  As  we  have  seen,  he  had 
been  accustomed  to  make  his  circuits  on  foot ;  but  Oswin, 
thinking  of  the  rough  paths  and  streams  that  had  to  be 
encountered  ^,  gave  him  a  horse  *  fit  for  a  king.'  But  soon 
afterwards,  a  poor  man  begged  alms  of  Aidan,  who,  under 
a  compassionate  impulse,  at  once  dismounted,  and  gave  him 
the  horse  with  all  its  goodly  trappings.  Oswin  heard  of 
this ;  and  the  next  time  they  were  going  in  to  dinner, 
he  said  to  Aidan,  'What  did  you  mean,  lord  bishop,  by 
giving  away  the  horse  that  was  to  be  all  your  own  '\  Had 
not  I  many  other  horses  of  less  value,  or  other  things  that 

probably  an  exaggeration.  The  founder  was  St.  Finnian  ;  see  Reeves's 
Adamnan,  p.  Ixxii.  St.  Columba  is  said  to  have  studied  there  ;  on  this 
see  Lanigan,  ii.  117.  The  point  is  of  some  interest,  because  St.  Finnian 
(probably  before  Columba's  birth)  had  studied  in  Wales  ;  ib.  i.  464. 
Compare  Maclear's  Ap.  of  Mediaev.  Eur.  p.  58,  on  the  ancient  school  of 
Cluain-inis  ;  and  for  other  monastic  schools,  Lanigan,  i.  402. 

^  '  Nobilibus  simul  atque  ignobilibus,'  Bede,  iii.  14  ;  i.e.  eorl-kin  and 
ceorl-kin,  Freeman,  i.  82, 

^  On  the  wild  parts  of  Yorkshire,  see  Bede,  iii.  23  ;  and  cp.  Ep.  ad 
Egb.  4,  'montibus  inaccessis  et  saltibus  dumosis.' 


i86  Murder  of  Oswtn. 

CHAP.  V.  would  have  served  as  almsgifts  1 '  Aidan  answered  with 
something  of  Irish  hastiness :  '  What  say  you,  0  king  ?  Is 
that  son  of  a  mare  worth  more  in  your  eyes  than  that  son 
of  God  ^  1 '  They  entered  the  hall :  Aidan  took  his  usual 
seat,  attended,  as  usual,  by  a  presbyter :  the  king,  who  was 
fresh  from  the  chase,  stood  with  his  thanes  by  the  fire, 
thinking :  suddenly  he  took  off  his  sword,  gave  it  to  a  thane, 
and  threw  himself  at  Aidan's  feet,  entreating  him  not  to  be 
angry  :  '  Never  again  will  I  say  a  word  about  this,  or  judge 
as  to  what  or  how  much  of  our  money  you  bestow  on  sons 
of  God.'  Aidan  was  astonished,  even  awe -struck :  he  rose, 
and  lifted  up  the  sensitive  prince,  assuring  him  that  he  was 
not  at  all  angry,  that  all  would  be  right  if  he  would  but  sit 
down  to  his  meal  and  cease  to  distress  himself.  Oswin's 
face  brightened,  and  he  obeyed  ^ :  but  then  it  was  Aidan's 
turn  to  be  sad,  and  his  tears  began  to  flow.  The  priest  who 
sat  by  him,  a  '  Scot '  like  himself,  asked  him  in  Irish,  so  that 
no  one  else  understood,  what  was  the  matter.  '  The  matter 
is,'  replied  Aidan,  'that  I  am  sure  the  king  will  not  live 
long.  I  never  till  now  saw  a  king  humble  'V  or  perhaps, 
'  so  humble.  It  is  in  my  mind  that  he  will  soon  be  hurried 
out  of  this  life;  for  this  people  does  not  deserve  to  have 
such  a  ruler.' 
Murder  of  The  foreboding  was  soon  verified  :  Deira  did  lose  Oswin. 
Occasions  of  jealousy  between  two  princes,  situated  as  he 
and  Oswy  were  ^,  could  not  be  wanting ;  it  was  inevitable 
that  Oswy  should  be  bent  on  reigning  over  all  Northumbria 
without  a  rival,  as  his  brother  had  done;  at  last,  under 
what  circumstances  we  know  not,  the  smouldering  fires 
blazed  out  into  war.  But  before  the  two  hosts  had  met, 
Oswin  ascertained  that  the  Bernician  king,  who  was  by  this 
time  growing  into  greatness,  had  more  '  auxiliaries  '  than  he 

^  Higden,  misunderstanding  this  *  filius  Dei,'  turns  it  into  '  Filius 
Mariae'  ;  Polychronicon,  b.  5  (vol.  vi.  p.  71). 

2  The  stoiy,  which  appears  quite  genuine,  shows  a  want  of  good  sense 
on  the  one  side,  and  an  excess  of  docility  on  the  other.  Oswin's  objection 
to  the  disproportionateness  of  the  gift  was  not  really  met  by  a  rejoinder 
which  would  make  a  virtue  of  indiscriminate  generosity. 

^  *  Nunquam  enim  ante  haec  vidi  humilem  regem,'  or,  *  tam  humilem.' 

*  Bede,  iii.  14  :  *  Sed  nee  cum  eo,'  &c.     Above,  p.  179. 


Honours  to  his  memory,  187 

could  muster.  He  therefore  resolved  '  to  give  up  his  inten-  chap.  v. 
tion  of  fighting,  and  to  reserve  himself  for  better  times. 
He  broke  up  his  army '  at  Wilfaresdun,  a  hill  about  twelve 
miles  north-west  of  Catterick,  and,  accompanied  by  one 
faithful  thane  ^  named  Tondhere,  '  turned  aside '  to  seek 
refuge  in  the  house  of  a  '  count  ^  named  Hunwald,'  whom  he 
believed  to  be  most  friendly  to  him :  '  but,  alas !  it  was  far 
otherwise.'  Hunwald  betrayed  the  fugitives  to  Oswy,  who 
sent  his  '  reeve  ^ '  Ethelwin  to  put  Oswin  and  his  companion 
to  death,  at  Gilling,  on  the  20th  of  August,  651.  This  was 
the  one  crime  of  Oswy's  life  ;  he  gave  some  token  of  speedy 
repentance  by  granting  the  request  "*  of  his  wife  Eanfled, 
the  daughter  of  Edwin  and  '  kinswoman '  of  Oswin,  that  he 
would  give  to  Trumhere,  a  Northumbrian  priest  akin  to 
Oswin  in  blood,  but  of  Scotic  training  and  ordination,  land 
for  a  convent  on  the  spot  of  the  murder,  where  '  prayers  ^ 
might  be  offered  for  the  souls  both  of  the  slain  man  and 
of  him  who  ordered  him  to  be  slain.'  The  corpse  of  the 
former  was  buried  at  Tynemouth,  where  a  chapel  of 
St.  Mary  had  already  been  built,  and  where,  soon  after- 
wards, one  monastery,  if  not  two,  arose  ^.     In  later  days, 

^  *  Cum  uno  tantum  milite  : '  Alfred  renders,  '  thegn.'     Cp.  Bede,  ii.  9, 

*  alium  de  militibus,' used  as  equivalent  to  '  ministris  * ;  also  iii.  i,  Eanfrid's 
twelve  chosen  '  milites ' ;  and  iv.  22,  '  timuit  se  militem  .  .  .  confiteri  ; ' 
V.  13,  'in  officio  militari;'  and  iv.  13,  H.  Abb.  i,  Ep.  Egb.  6.  Above, 
p.  129. 

^  '  Comitis,'  a  'gesith';  so  Alfred  renders.  Cp.  Bede,  i.  25,  Ethelbert 
with  his  comites  ;  iii.  22,  the  two  comites  who  slew  Sigebert ;  iv.  22, 

*  comitem  Aedilredi ;'  v.  4,  5,  the  comites  Puch  and  Addi. 

^  '  Praefectum  suum  ; '  probably  the  manager  of  the  royal  property,  the 
officer  who  was  to  do  justice  between  the  king's  tenants  :  see  Kemble, 
ii.  169,  on  the  king's  reeve.  The  legend  of  St.  Oswin  calls  Ethelwin  the 
steward  of  Oswy's  household.     Cp.  Ep.  Egb.  7  ;  Vit.  Cuthb.  15. 

*  Bede,  iii.  24  :  '  Nam  regina,'  &c.  Oswy's  private  life  was  not  spot- 
less ;  he  had  an  illegitimate  son,  Aldfrid,  afterwards  king. 

^  Bede,  1.  c,  *  orationes  .  .  .  pro  .  .  .  salute  ; '  and  iii.  14,  *  pro  .  .  . 
animae  redemptione.'  Cp.  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  7,  and  the  charter  of  Ethel- 
ward,  Kemble's  Cod.  Diplom.  i.  64  ;  of  Forthere,  ib.  i.  73  ;  of  Ethelbald, 
ib.  i.  82  ;  and  Wilfrid  in  Eddi's  Life,  c.  62.  After  Trumhere  the  house  of 
Gilling  seems  to  have  had  for  superiors  Kynefrid  and  Tunbert ;  Anon. 
Hist,  of  Abbots  of  Jarrow,  in  Bede's  Works,  vi.  416  (Giles). 

*  Cp.  Bede,  v.  6,  for  Herebald,  abbot  of  the  monastery  near  the  mouth 
of  the  Tyne  when  Bede  wrote. ,  See  Vit.  Cuthb.  3,  35,  for  the  house  first 
of  monks,  then  of  nuns,  *  non  longe  ab  ostio  Tini,'  but  '  ad  meridiem,'  and 


i88  Nunneries  in  Northumbria. 

CHAP.  V.  after  the  desolation  caused  by  the  Northmen  had  been 
repaired,  and  the  bones  of  the  'humble  king'  had  been 
opportunely  discovered  ^,  a  Norman  monastery  rose  up  on 
the  cliff,  where  the  ruins  of  a  later  church,  in  the  delicate 
grace  of  '  First- Pointed '  architecture,  overlook  the  ocean, 
and  witness  to  the  days  when  '  the  Peace  of  St.  Oswin' 
gave  security  to  fugitives  who  came  within  a  mile  of  his 
tomb  ^. 

This  tragedy  had  some  effect  in  shortening  the  days  of 
Aidan.  He  had  continued  to  be  on  good  terms  with  Oswy : 
he  had  held  communications  with  Utta,  the  head  of  a 
monastery  at  Gateshead,  who  was  charged  to  ask  in 
Oswy's  name  for  the  hand  of  Edwin's  daughter,  then 
in  Kent  ^ ;  and  he  had  invited  Edwin's  grand-niece  Hilda 
from  East-Anglia  ^  into  Northumbria,  where,  after  'dwelling 
for  a  year,  with  a  very  few  companions,  on  the  north  bank 
of  the  Wear,  she  became  in  649  the  superior  of  a  nunnery 
near  Hartlepool  ^,  from  whence  the  abbess  Heiu,  the  first 
of  all  Northumbrian  women  to  receive  the  monastic  habit 
from  Aidan 's  own  hand,  had  retired  to  another  '  abode '  at 
Tadcaster  ^.  Hilda's  rule  at  Hartlepool  was  formed  by  the 
best  lessons  that  she  could  gain  from  '  learned  men ' ;  and  it 
was  one  of  Aidan's  special  pleasures  to  visit  her,  and  to  give 
instructions  that  met  with  full  response  from  a  mind  natur- 
ally thoughtful,  and  a  will  devoted  to  the  service  of  God  '^. 
But  earthly  sorrows  and  earthly  solaces  were  soon  to  be 

distinct  from  Herebald's.  Smith  places  it  on  the  Scottish  Tj'ne.  For 
legends  as  to  the  first  foundation  at  Tynemouth,  see  Monast.  Angl.  iii.  302 ; 
Gibson,  Monast.  of  Tynemouth,  i.  12. 

^  The  discovery  took  place  in  1065  (Florence),  and  a  monastery  was 
founded  soon  afterwards.     The  bones  were  for  a  time  kept  at  Jarrow. 

2  Gibson,  i.  34.     See  above,  p.  103. 

^  See  Bede,  iii.  15,  25.     Gateshead,  'Ad  caprae  caput,'  is  Goatshead, 

*  Bede,  iv.  23. 

'  'Heruteu,  id  est,  Insula  Cervi,*  Bede,  iii.  24  (as  if  '  Hart-ey ').  The 
cemetery  of  the  nunnery  was  discovered  in  1833,  under  a  field  ;  see 
Murray's  Durh.  and  Northumb.  p.  115. 

^  Bede,  iv.  23  :  *  Deinde  ab  Aidano,'  &c.  '  Calcaria,'  a  Roman  station 
on  the  Wharfe,  called  by  the  English  '  Kaelcaceaster*  (Tadcaster).  Heiu's 
nunnery  was  probably  at  Healaugh  (Heiu's  leeg,  or  territory),  three  miles 
north  of  Calcaria. 

'  Bede,  iv.  23  :  '  Praelata  autem  .  .  .  nam  et  episcopus  Aidan,'  &c. 


Death  of  Si.  Atdan.  189 

over  for  the  holy  bishop.  It  was  about  twelve  days  from  chap.  v. 
the  murder  of  Oswin  ^  that  he  was  staying  at  a  royal '  vill  l>eath  of 
near  Bamborough,  from  whence  he  had  often  made  preach- 
ing circuits^.  An  attack  of  illness,  it  seems,  came  on  so 
suddenly  that  he  could  not  be  taken  into  his  bedroom,  but 
was  laid  on  the  ground,  screened  by  an  awning,  and  sup- 
ported by  a  wooden  buttress  that  propped  the  church's 
western  end  ^.  In  this  position,  significant  of  his  habitual 
detachment  from  worldly  interests  *,  he  breathed  his  last  on 
the  31st  of  August,  651.  The  little  village  which  now 
represents  '  the  burgh  of  queen  Bebba '  is  less  really 
ennobled  by  its  grand  castle,  and  its  associations  with 
Northumbrian  royalty  and  with  a  modern  prince-bishop's 
munificence,  than  by  the  fact  that,  in  visiting  its  interesting 
church  ^,  we  stand  upon  the  ground  where  Aidan  died. 

^  Bede,  iii.  14  :  *  Sed  et  ipse  antistes,'  &c. 

^  Bede,  iii.  17  :  '  Hunc  cum  dies  mortis,'  &c. 

^  This  buttress  escaped  unhurt  in  two  fires  (one  caused  by  Penda's 
invasion) ;  on  the  second  occasion  the  holes  by  which  it. was  fixed  to  the 
church  were  burnt  through  ;  Bede,  iii.  17.  The  church  itself  was 
evidently  of  wood. 

*  See  Kingsley's  Hermits,  p.  291.  The  touching  phrase  of  the  Irish 
annals  is  very  appropriate  in  this  case:  '  Quies A.^&m.  episcopi  Saxonum  ;' 
Tighernach.     See  too  the  story  of  Cuthbert's  vision  in  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  4. 

^  It  is  dedicated  in  honour  of  St.  Aidan. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


Prepara- 
tions for 
organ  iza- 
jion. 


Finan  at 

Lindis- 

farne. 


As  yet  we  have  not  been  able  to  speak  of  one  organized 
Church  for  Saxons  and  Angles.  The  period  now  imme- 
diately before  us  exhibits  a  threefold  process  of  preparation 
for  such  an  unity.  We  shall  see  missions  extending  over 
a  wider  extent  of  country :  we  shall  see  the  resisting  force 
of  Paganism  gathering  itself  up,  and  sinking  back  paralyzed : 
we  shall  see  the  removal  of  the  difference  which  practically 
kept  Christians  of  one  class  from  coalescing  with  Christians 
of  the  other. 

Let  us  begin  by  looking  at  the  several  bishoprics,  as  they 
were  occupied  at  the  close  of  651.  Honorius  was  still  at 
Canterbury,  connecting  the  Kentish  Church  in  his  own 
person  with  the  generation  that  had  sat  at  Gregory's  feet. 
He  had  seen  much  more  than  he  had  taken  part  in  :  he  had 
had  little  to  do,  personally,  in  the  extension  of  the  Church, 
beyond  the  consecration  of  Ithamar  for  Rochester  and  of 
Thomas  for  Dunwich.  The  East-Anglian  mission  might, 
in  one  sense,  be  traced  to  his  suggestion  of  that  sphere  for 
the  activities  of  Felix:  with  the  work  in  Wessex  he  had 
had  nothing  to  do,  although  Kent  lay  near  to  the  eastern 
line  of  that  kingdom.  Agilbert  was  carrying  on  the  work 
of  Birinus  in  entire  independence  of  Canterbury.  The 
archbishop  could  not  regard  him  as  a  suffragan ;  the  only 
two  bishops  with  whom  Honorius  had  any  close  relations 
were  Ithamar  and  Thomas.  As  we  have  seen,  he  had 
heartily  respected  Aidan ;  but  they  did  not  come  near  each 
other  in  any  effective  sense.  And  now,  in  Aidan's  place, 
there  was  come  from  Hy  ^  a  bishop  named  Finan,  who  was 


*  Bede,  iii.  17,  *  et  ipse  .  .  .  ab  Hii .  .  .  destinatus  ; '  ib.  iii.  25,  '  a  Scottis 
ordinatus  ac  missus.*     The  consecration  of  Finan  must  have  been  per- 


Finanj  Bishop  of  Lindisfarne.  191 

destined  to  be  in  one  respect  more  closely  connected  with  chap.  vi. 
*  South-country '  Church  life  than  Aidan  had  ever  been,  but 
who,  although  a  good  man,  did  not  possess  those  rare 
qualities  which  made  all  men  acknowledge  in  Aidan  a 
living  saint.  We  gain  some  notion  of  the  extremely  humble 
aspect  of  Aidan  s  own  church  at  Lindisfarne  by  observing 
that  when  Finan  arrived,  he  found  it  desirable  to  build 
a  church  '  suitable  to  the  episcopal  see  ^,  and  constructed  it, 
in  the  Scotic  fashion,  not  of  stone,  but  entirely  of  hewn 
oak,  with  a  covering  of  reeds,'  for  which  a  later  bishop, 
named  Eadbert,  substituted  sheets  of  lead.  Soon  after 
Finan's  arrival,  the  Paschal  question  was  again  revived, 
by  the  anti-Scotic  zeal  of  some  who  came  from  Gaul  or 
from  Kent.  Among  these  was  one  whose  Irish  birth  must 
have  rendered  him  very  obnoxious  to  the  Scotic  clergy, 
'  a  very  ardent  upholder  of  the  true  Easter,'  named  Ronan^, 
who  had  studied  in  Gaul  or  Italy,  and  would  appear  to  his 
own  countrymen  as  little  better  than  an  apostate.  He  hesi- 
tated not  to  enter  into  controversy  with  Finan.  The  debate, 
says  Bede,  '  brought  many  to  right  views,  or  impelled  them 
to  a  more  diligent  inquiry  as  to  the  truth.  But  Ronan 
could  by  no  means  convert  Finan :  on  the  contrary,  as  he 
was  a  man  of  rough  temper  ^^  by  sharp  language  he  em- 
bittered him  further,  and  made  him  an  open  adversary  of 
the  truth.'  If  Finan  had  such  a  temper,  it  must  be  allowed 
that  he  was  somewhat  severely  tried  by  such  objurgations 
on  the  part  of  an  inferior,  especially  when  he  found  that 

formed  by  a  Scotic  bishop,  or  bishops,  at  Hy,  as  Aldan's  had  been. 
Tighernach  calls  him  son  of  Kimed  (a.  660).  We  meet  with  an  Irish 
monk  named  Finan  in  Adamn.  i.  49  ;  and  we  know  of  the  Finnians  of 
Clonard  and  Moville,  both  of  whom  were  teachers  of  Columba. 

^  Bede,  iii.  25  :  *  Qui  in  insula  Lindisfarnensi  fecit  ecclesiam,*  &c.  See 
Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  369;  and  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  177,  'The  walls 
were  made  of  wooden  sheeting,  which  was  protected  from  the  weather 
outside  by  a  coat  of  rush  thatch.'     See  above,  p.  166. 

■^  Bede,  iii.  25  :  '  Erat  in  his  acerrimus  veri  Paschae  defensor,'  &c. 

^  'Quod  esset  ferocis  animi.'  Lanigan,  from  the  use  of  ' acerrimus ' 
and  'castigando,'  inclines  to  refer  '  ferocis  animi  *  to  Ronan,  although  he 
admits  that  the  context  seems  to  favour  an  allusion  to  Finan  ;  ii.  427. 
See  Grub,  Eccl.  Hist.  Sc.  i.  83 :  '  Finan  was  deficient  in  the  gentle  and 
winning  temper'  which  Aidan  had  shown,  but  'in  other  respects  was  an 
admirable  prelate.' 


192  Paschal  Question  revived, 

CHAP.  VI,  James  the  Deacon,  now  venerable  from  years  as  well  as 
from  self-devotion,  had  made  proselytes  to  the  foreign 
system,  and  that  the  queen  Eanfled  and  her  Kentish 
chaplain  Romanus  were  using  influence  on  the  same  side. 
Was  it  come  to  this,  Finan  might  ask,  that  Ronan  was  to 
be  in  Northumbria  what  Cummian  had  been  in  Munster, 
the  means  of  discrediting  the  usages  of  his  native  Church  ? 
As  yet,  Oswy  was  faithful  to  his  own  training  among  the 
Scots ;  but  how  long  would  he  resist  domestic  pressure,  and 
an  array  of  Gallic  or  Roman  authorities  ?  The  inconveni- 
ence of  the  discordant  reckonings  came  practically  to  the 
front  when,  on  one  occasion,  Oswy  was  keeping  his  Easter- 
day  with  Finan,  while  Eanfled  and  her  attendants  were 
observing  their  '  day  of  Palms  ^.'  It  was  a  visible  dis- 
crepancy such  as  had  occurred  when  some  Gallic  churches 
in  577  differed  from  the  rest  by  a  whole  month  as  to  the 
reckoning  of  Easter  ^,  or  when  some  Irish  visitors  to  Rome 
found  that  their  fellow-lodgers,  a  Jew,  a  Greek,  a  '  Scythian,' 
and  an  Egyptian,  went  to  St.  Peter's  for  the  Easter  service 
while  they  were  keeping  a  Lenten  Sunday  at  home  ^.  In 
effect,  this  curious  duplication  of  Easters  in  one  royal 
household  might  illustrate  the  unseemliness  of  such  a  want 
of  Paschal  uniformity  as  was  deprecated,  after  the  Nicene 
Council,  in  a  letter  professing  to  be  from  Constantine 
himself*.  Doubtless,  it  prepared  the  way  for  a  decisive 
contest  between  the  Scotic  and  '  Catholic '  parties ;  but 
Finan  succeeded  in  preventing  any  open  breach,  as  long  as 
he  occupied  the  see. 
Conver-  There  was,  indeed,  matter   of  interest  far  worthier  to 

Peadaf       engage  the  attention  of  Northumbrian  Churchmen.     The 
Mid- Angles  ^,   as   Bede    calls  them,   who    dwelt    between 

^  Bede,  iii.  25  :  '  Et  cum  rex  Pascha  Dominicum  solutis  jejuniis 
face  ret,'  &c. 

2  See  above,  p.  89.  Later,  in  633,  the  fourth  Toledan  Council  refers, 
c.  5  (Mansi,  x.  618),  to  the  mistakes  caused  in  Spain,  as  to  Easter,  by 
'  di versa  observantia  laterculorum.* 

8  Cummian's  Ep.  to  Segenius,'  &c.  in  Usher,  Sylloge,  p.  23  ;  King's 
Hist.  Ch.  Ireland,  i.  162.  *  Eus.  Vit.  Con.  iii.  18  ;  Soc.  i.  9. 

^  Bede,  i.  15;  iii.  21  ;  iv.  12.  He  distinguishes  them  as  'Midland 
Angles'  from  the  Mercians  of  the  Welsh.  See  Green,  Making  of  Engl, 
p.  298  :  '  The  Middle  English  or  Leicester-men.' 


Conversion  of  Peada,  193 

the  Trent  and  the  Bedford  district,  had  been  placed  by  the  chap.  vi. 
Mercian  king  under  the  government  of  his  son  Peada, '  an 
excellent  youth/  says  Bede,  '  most  worthy  of  the  title  and 
character  of  a  king^.'  His  father  allowed  him  to  visit 
Northumbria  on  a  peaceful  errand,  during  some  cessation 
of  his  own  frequent  inroads  on  its  border^.  Peada  re- 
quested the  hand  of  Alchfled,  the  daughter  of  Oswy  and 
Eanfled.  Oswy  replied  as  Eadbald  had  replied  to  Edwin's 
suit  for  her  grandmother  Ethelburga :  '  I  cannot  give  my 
child  to  a  heathen.  If  you  would  wed  her,  you  must 
accept  the  faith  of  Christ,  and  baptism,— you  and  the 
people  under  your  rule.'  Peada  was  disposed  to  listen  to 
Christian  teaching  :  he  had  been  impressed  by  the  conver- 
sation of  Alchfrid  son  of  Oswy,  a  prince  who,  though  he 
became  disloyal  as  a  son,  had  a  deep  sense  of  religion  and 
a  strong  love  of  learning,  and  who  had  married  Peada's 
sister  Kyniburga,  one  of  those  five  children  of  the  fierce 
old  heathen  conqueror  who  were  afterwards  canonized  as 
saints  ^.  The  promise  of  '  a  resurrection,  of  a  heavenly 
kingdom,  of  future  immortality,'  spoke  to  the  heart  of  the 
young  Mercian  *.  '  I  will  be  a  Christian,'  he  said  emphati- 
cally, '  whether  I  obtain  the  maiden  or  not.'  Once  more,  as 
in  the  case  of  Oswald  the  son  of  Ethelfrid,  'out  of  the 
strong  came  forth  sweetness;'  and  the  heir  of  Pen  da's 
realm  was  baptized  by  Finan  ^  '  in  the  well-known  royal 

^  Bede,  iii.  21  :  '  Qui  cum  esset  juvenis  optimus,'  &c.  Malmesbury  calls 
him  Weda  ;  G.  R.  i.  75. 

2  Bede,  iii.  24  :  *  Acerbas  atque  intolerabiles  . .  .  irruptiones  .  .  .  regis 
Merciorum.'     Cp.  iii.  16,  17. 

^  Ethelred  (who  however,  as  king,  destroyed  Kentish  monasteries  in 
his  invasion  of  Kent),  Merewald  (himself  the  father  of  four  'saints'), 
Merchelm,  Kyniburga,  Kineswith.  Kyniburga,  in  her  widowhood,  ruled 
a  religious  house  at  Caistor  (Kyniburgacaster)  ;  see  Alb.  Butler,  March  6. 
'Nearly  all  Penda's  children  and  grandchildren  died  in  the  odour  of 
sanctity;'  Stubbs  on  Foundation  of  Peterborough,  p.  7.  Cp.  Florence, 
App.  and  a.  675.  Wilburga,  another  daughter  of  Penda,  was  the  mother 
of  St,  Osyth.     For  St.  Werburga  see  below,  p.  207. 

*  *  At  ille  audita,'  &c.  ;  Bede,  iii.  21.  Compare  the  speech  of  the  thane 
in  Bede,  ii.  13,  and  *  promissis  eorum  suavissimis,'  i.  26;  and  'caelestia 
sperare,'  iv.  13  :  see  too  St.  Boniface's  fifteenth  sermon,  *  Ibi  est  vita  cum 
Deo  sine  morte,  lux  sine  tenebris,*  &c. 

*  The  renunciations  made  at  baptism  (see  Bede,  iii.  19^  are  here  referred 
to  :  '  abreuuutiata  sorde  idololatriae  *  (cp.  iii.  i). 

O 


194  Mission  to  Mid-Angles. 

CHAP.  VI.  town  called  At-the-Wall,'  which  has  been  identified  vari- 
ously with  Walton,  Walbottle,  and  again  with  Pandon, 
a  place  of  immemorial  antiquity,  now  included  within 
Newcastle  ^.  Finan  then  commissioned  four  priests,  three 
of  whom,  Cedd,  Adda^  and  Betti,  were  Northumbrians, 
and  the  fourth,  Diuma,  was  an  Irishman,  to  accompany 
Peada  home,  and  to  evangelize  his  Mid-Angles.  Thus 
was  formed  the  first  mission  to  the  Midlands,  in  653. 
The  priests,  'being  well  qualified  for  their  work  by 
learning  and  by  character,  were  willingly  heard ;  and  day 
by  day  many  of  the  nobles  and  of  the  lowest  people 
renounced  the  filth  ^  of  idolatry,  and  were  washed  in  the 
fountain  of  faith*.'  But  they  also  ventured  into  Mercia 
proper ;  and  its  old  king,  while  for  himself  he  held  fast  to 
his  old  gods,  was  yet  so  far  softened  by  age  as  to  offer  no 
opposition  to  their  preaching,  and  also  shrewd  enough  to 
note  some  cases  of  Christian  profession  discredited  by 
inconsistent  practice,  and  honest  enough  to  fling  at  them 
a  few  words  of  contemptuous  disgust.  '  The  mean  wretches, 
who  have  put  their  faith  in  this  new  God,  and  then  will 
not  trouble  themselves  to  obey  him  -^ ! '  This  speech, 
the  only  one  recorded  of  Penda,  betokens  a  healthy  vein  of 
thoroughness,  which  would  incline  him  to  respect  Christian 
belief  when  represented  by  men  who  lived  up  to  their 
creed. 
Second  Another  very  important  step  taken  by  the  Northumbrian 

tiie  East-    Church  at  this  time  was  the  second  mission  to  the  East- 
Saxons.      Saxons.     It  was  thirty-seven  years  after  the  expulsion  of 
Mellitus  when  Sigebert  the  Good  ^,  as  he  is  called,  successor 

^  Bede  says  it  was  *  twelve  miles  from  the  eastern  (i.  e.  the  "  north  ") 
sea'  ;  iii.  22.  But  Newcastle  is  nine-and-a-half  miles  from  the  mouth  of 
the  Tyne,  and  Pandon  is  still  nearer  to  it. 

^  He  was  the  brother  of  Utta  (see  p.  188%  who,  acting  on  Aidan's 
advice,  poured  oil  on  waves  in  a  storm,  with  a  suc^ss  which  Bede  thought 
supernatural ;  iii,  15.     Cp.  above,  p.  73. 

^  Cp.  Bede,  iii.  i  ;  and  iii.  30,  'in  perfidiae  sordibus.' 

*  Bede,  iii.  21  ;  cp.  iv.  16,  'fonte  Salvatoris  ablutos.'     Above,  p.  116. 

'  Bede,  iii.  21  :  '  Quin  potius  odio  habebat,'  &c.  These  men  were  con- 
formists to  the  faith  of  his  heir  as  such. 

Bede,  iii.  22  :  'Erat  enim  rex,'  &c.     Florence  surely  inserts  too  many 
generations  between  him  and  Sabert's  brother  (tom.  i.  p.  250). 


J 


Conversion  of  Sigebert  of  Essex.         195 

of  that  Sigebert  the  Little  who  had  succeeded  his  father  chap.  vi. 
and  uncles  in  617,  paid  one  of  his  *  frequent '  visits  to  his 
friend  King  Oswy,  and  profited  by  his  host's  exhortations 
as  Sabert  had  done  by  those  of  Ethelbert,  as  Eorpwald  by 
those  of  Edwin.  The  passage  in  which  Bede  summarizes 
the  Northumbrian  king's  pleading  against  idolatry  is  one 
of  the  finest  in  his  book :  it  reads  like  a  combination  of  the 
arguments  of  prophets  and  psalmists  with  those  grand 
words  in  which  Tacitus  compresses  the  case  for  Mono- 
theism ^.  Surely,  said  Oswy,  Sigebert  would  understand 
that  a  God  could  not  be  made  out  of  wood  and  stone,  the 
remnants  of  which  were  burned,  or  fashioned  into  household 
vessels,  or  even  thrown  away,  trodden  under  foot,  and  turned 
into  earth  ^.  Surely  '  He  alone  could  be  thought  of  as  God, 
who  was  incomprehensible  in  majesty,  invisible  to  human 
eyes,  almighty,  eternal,  the  Creator  and  Ruler  and  righteous 
Judge  of  the  universe,  whose  eternal  abode  was  not  in  poor 
perishable  metal,  but  in  heaven,  where  eternal  rewards  were 
in  store  for  all  those  who  won  Id  learn  and  do  their  Maker's 
will.'  Such  ideas, '  frequently  inculcated  with  the  earnest- 
ness of  a  friend  or  even  a  brother,'  told  fully  upon  Sigebert : 
he  consulted  with  the  '  friends  '  who  had  accompanied  him 
to  the  north,  took  his  own  resolution,  advised  them  to  join 
with  him  ;  and  after  they  had  all '  assented  to  the  faith,'  he 
and  they  were  baptized  at  the  same  place  and  by  the  same 
hands  as  Peada,  and  apparently  in  the  autumn  of  the  same 
year  653.  Like  Peada,  Sigebert  asked  for  a  supply  of 
Christian  teachers,  to  convert  and  baptize  his  people  :  and 
Oswy  summoned  ^  Cedd  from  his  work  among  the  Mid- 
Angles,  and  sent  him  to  preach  to  the  East-Saxons,  in 
company  with  another  priest.     They  traversed  that  king- 

^  Cp.  Tac.  Hist.  v.  5  :  '  Judaei  mente  sola  unumque  numen  intelligunt,' 
&c. 

^  Boniface  V  also  assumes  the  identification  of  the  image  with  the  god ; 
Bede,  ii.  10.  Oswy,  indeed, — or  Finan  speaking  through  Oswy, — reverses 
the  taunt  of  Isa.  xliv.  17.  It  is  not  that  '  the  residue  '  of  the  wood  used  for 
household  purposes  is  '  made  a  god,'  but  that  when  enough  material  has 
been  used  for  the  image,  the  *  bits  remaining  over'  would  be  burned,  or 
thrown  away,  or  'formed  into  vessels  of  any  sort.' 

^  *  Clamavit  ad  se  ;'  Bede,  iii.  22  ;  so  in  iii.  23,  iv.  8,  14,  19,  and  v.  3. 

O  2 


196  Ceddj  Bishop  of  East-Saxons^ 

CHAP.  VL  dom,  and  '  gathered  together  a  large  Church ' :  and  ere 
long,  probably  in  654,  Cedd  '  happened  to  return  home  and 
visit  Lindisfarne  to  converse  with  Bishop  Finan,  who,  on 
learning  how  the  work  of  the  Gospel  had  prospered  with 
him,  made  him  bishop  for  the  race  of  the  East-Saxons, 
having  called  in  two  other  bishops  to  assist  him  in  the 
ordination/  These  two  prelates  must  have  been  Scoto- 
Celtic — a  fact  which  gives  special  significance  to  Bede's 
Codd,  next  words :  '  Cedd,  having  received  the  degree  of  the 
the  East-  ^piscopate,  returned  to  his  province,  and,  fulfilling  with 
Saxons,  greater  authority  the  work  which  he  had  begun,  made 
churches  in  difierent  places.'  It  would  have  been  impos- 
sible for  Bede  to  write  thus,  had  he  suspected  that  there 
was  the  slightest  real  flaw  in  the  episcopal  character  of 
Finan  or  of  the  two  other  Scotic  consecrators,  although  he 
knew  the  two  latter  to  be  subject  to  the  authority  of  the 
abbot  of  Hy,  as  primate  of  the  Scottish  Church;  and  from  this 
one  passage  ^  we  might  confidently  infer  that  actual  bishops 
had  been  employed,  in  Scotland,  to  confer  the  episcopate  on 
Aidan  and  Finan.  Let  us  now  follow  Cedd  in  his  mission- 
circuits  amongst  the  East-Saxons.  '  He  built  churches,  and 
ordained  presbyters  and  deacons  to  assist  him  in  preaching 
and  in  baptizing,  especially  in  that  city  which  in  the  Saxon 
tongue  is  called  Ythancsestir,  but  also  in  that  which  is  called 
Tilaburg ;  the  former  of  these  places  is  on  the  bank  of  the 
river  Pent,  the  latter  on  that  of  the  Thames.'  In  this 
sentence  of  Bede's  we  observe,  first,  a  foreshadowing  of  the 
parochial  system, — which,  however,  grew  up  very  gradually 
in  England,  and  was  by  no  means  thoroughly  established 
in  Northumbria  in  the  last  years  of  Bede's  own  life  ^ :  and 
secondly,  the  absence  of  the  name  of  London,  which  is 

*■  Bishop  Russell  uses  it  *  to  expose  the  absurdity  of  those  writers  who 
imagine  that  the  monks  of  lona  were  hostile  to  episcopacy,'  and  to 
warrant  *  the  conclusion  that  Aidan,  Finan,  and  Golman  were  consecrated 
by  bishops  ; '  Hist.  Ch.  Sc.  i.  34.  So  Grub,  Eccl.  Hist.  Sc.  i.  155.  See  above, 
p.  156.     Observe  nlso  the  presence  of  three  consecrators. 

"  Bede,  Ep.  ad  Egb.  3  :  *  Necessarium  satis  est,  ut  plures  tibi  sacri 
operis  adjutores  adsciscas,  presbyteros  videlicet  ordinando  .  .  .  qui  in  sin- 
gulis viculis  praedicando . .  .  adsistant.'  That  the  system  had  no  founder, 
but  grew  up  naturally  out  of  the  relation  of  the  priests  to  townships,  see 
Bp.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  260.     See  Add.  Notes,  F. 


J 


reclaims  them  to  Christianity.  197 

probably  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  great  city  was  chap.  vi. 
*  fluctuating  between  the  condition  of  an  independent  com- 
monwealth and  that  of  a  dependency  of  the  Mercian  kings  ^' 
Strictly  speaking,  therefore,  Cedd  seems  not  to  have  been 
bishop  of  London  ^ :  and  of  the  two  places  named  by  Bede 
as  centres  of  his  mission  work, '  Ythancsestir '  appears  to  have 
a  precedence  over  Tilbury.     It  has  been  placed  near  Brad- 
well-on-the-sea,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Blackwater,  formerly 
called  the  Pent,  and  has  also  been  identified  with  the  Roman 
station  of  Othona  ^.     Tilbury,  which  is  familiarly  associated 
with  the  Spanish  Armada,  would  have  the  advantage  of 
being  near  the  mouth  of  the  Thames.     At  each  of  these 
two  places  Cedd  established  not  only  a  body  of  clergy,  but 
also  a  *  swarm  of  servants  of  Christ  ^,'  or  monks  :  whom  he 
taught  to  observe  '  the  discipline  of  the  regular  life,' — that 
is,  the  monastic  system  of  the  Scotic  Church, — '  as  far  as 
their  untrained  minds  could  receive  it,' — a.  phrase  which  is 
suggestive  of  some  such  austerity  as  we  know  to   have 
characterized  the  rule  of  Columban.     Yet,  stern  as  this  dis- 
cipline may  have   been,   the  East-Saxon   monks   heartily 
loved  their  bishop :  witness  the  touching  story  ^  of  thirty 
brethren  of  '  his  monastery,' — probably  that  of  Ythancester, 
— who,  on  hearing  of  his  death  and  burial  in  Northumbria, 
came  all  the  way  into  Yorkshire  in  order   either  to  live 
or  die  beside  his  grave,  and  in  fact  did  all  die  there  of 
the  then  raging  pestilence,  save  one  little  boy,  long  after- 
wards '  useful '  as  a  priest  ^.     Thus,  for  some  years,  all  went 
well  in  Essex  :  Christianity  regained  its  hold  on  the  people, 
or,  as  Bede  phrases  it,  '  the  teaching  of  the  heavenly  life 
received  a  daily  increase,  to  the  joy  of  the  king  and  amid 
the  sympathy  of  his  subjects  '^.'     But  Cedd  could  not  be 
satisfied   without   periodical   visits   to  his   native   North- 

*  Freeman,  i.  24.     Palgrave,  E.  C.  p.  414  :  '  Strictly  speaking,  we  liave 
no  proof  that  London  ever  formed  part  of  the  early  Anglo-Saxon  kingdoms.* 

*  Florence,  indeed,  calls  him  so,  a.  621. 

^  Camden,  Britannia,  i.  411  ;  Horsley,  Brit.  Rom.  p.  487. 

*  Bede,  iii.  22  :  '  famulorum  Christi,'  used  technically. 
'  Bede,  iii.  23  :  '  Cum  ergo  episcopum  defunctum,'  &c. 

*  See  below,  p.  201,  on  children  in  monasteries. 

^  Bede,  iii.  22  :  '  Cumque  tempore  non  pauco,'  &;c. 


198  Foundation  of  Lastmgham. 

rjiAp.  VI.  country,  in  order  to  preach  to  his  own  folk  ^ :  and  one  of 
his  three  brothers,  a  priest  named  Cselin,  comes  before  us 
as  chaplain  to  Ethelwald  ^  the  son  of  Oswald,  whom  his 
uncle  Oswy  permitted  to  act  as  sub-king  in  Deira.  This 
prince  exhibits  a  strange  combination  of  his  father's  devout 
habits  with  a  mean  jealousy  which  impelled  him  into  a 
shameful  treason  ^ ;  but  the  religious  side  of  his  nature 
comes  out  in  his  relations  with  Cedd,  who  was  introduced 
to  him  by  Caelin,  and  to  whom,  '  seeing  him  to  be  a  holy 
and  wise  man,  and  approved  in  conduct/  he  offered  a  piece 
of  land  for  the  building  of  a  monastery,  whither  he  himself 
might  come  '  to  pray  and  to  hear  the  Word,  and  where  he 
might  eventually  be  buried.  For,'^says  Bede  *, '  he  sincerely 
believed  that  he  would  be  greatly  helped  by  the  daily 
prayers  of  those  who  would  serve  the  Lord  in  that  place.' 
rouiida-  The  site  being  left  to  Cedd's  choice,  he  fixed  upon  a  wild 
Lasting-  spo^  under  the  Pickering  hills  ^,  where,  says  Bede,  '  there 
ham.  seemed  to  have  been  haunts  of  robbers  and  lairs  of  wild 

beasts  rather  than  dwellings  of  men.'  This  place  was  Last- 
ingham,  where  Cedd,  after  the  custom  of  Lindisfarne,  began 
by  hallowing  the  ground  on  which  the  building  was  to  be 
erected  ^ :  he  asked  leave  of  Ethelwald  to  spend  a  whole 

^  Bede,  iii,  23  :  '  Solebat  autem  idem  vir  Domini,'  &c. 

^  Bede  gives  the  name  its  rough  North-country  form,  Oidilwald  (cp. 
V,  i).  Caelin  'used  to  minister  the  word  and  the  "  sacramenta  fidei  " ' 
to  him  and  to  his  household  (familiae).  The  next  w^ords,  '  for  he  was 
a  presbyter,*  show  that  '  sacramenta  fidei'  means  here  the  sacraments  or 
other  sacred  rites  of  Christianity  as  connected  with,  and  involving,  the 
faith,  as  in  the  Roman  consecration-form  the  chalice  is  called  '  mysterium 
fidei.'     On  '  sacramentum '  see  above,  p.  126. 

^  This  union  of  a  certain  kind  or  amount  of  piety  with  an  utter  want  of 
nobleness  of  character  reminds  us,  in  some  measure,. of  Henry  III.  Some 
such  inconsistency  may  have  existed  in  Alchfrid. 

*  '  Nam  et  seipsum,'  &c.     Cp.  iii.  24,  '  supplicandum  pro  pace  gentis.' 

^  '  In  montibus  arduis  ac  remotis  ; '  Bede,  iii.  23.  He  applies  the  words 
of  Isaiah  xxxv.  7,  '  In  the  habitation  of  dragons'.  .  .  shall  be  grass  with 
reeds  and  inishes,' — '  that  is,  the  fruit  of  good  works  should  spring  up  in 
the  place  where  formerly  beasts  had  their  haunts,  or  men  lived  like 
beasts.'  Comp.  Bede,  iv.  3,  and  Praef.  Lastingham  lies  in  an  amphi- 
theatre of  hills.     See  Waymarks  in  Church  History,  p.  287. 

^  See  above,  p.  167.  Bede  mentions  the  dedication  of  churches  in  iii. 
7,  8,  and  v.  24:  but  these  passages  refer  to  the  Roman  rite  which  had 
grown  up  (out  of  the  '  deposition  '  of  relics)  in  the  latter  part  of  the  sixth 


Death  of  Archbishop  Honorius,         199 

Lent  there,  *  fasting  on  all  week  days  until  evening,  when  chap.  vi. 
he  took  an  ^gg^  a  morsel  of  bread,  and  a  little  milk  and 
water.  For  he  said  that  this  was  the  usage  of  those  from 
whom  he  had  learned  the  rule  of  regular  discipline.'  When 
ten  days  of  this  Lent  still  remained,  he  was  summoned  to 
the  king;  but  his  brother  Kynibil,  who  was  also  'his 
presbyter  ^,'  completed  the  series  of  prayers  and  fasts,  and 
a  monastery  after  the  Scotic  type^  was  founded  at 
Lastingham, — the  first  church  being  built  of  wood. 

Such  was  the  tenor  of  Cedd's  episcopal  life.  It  began 
when  the  see  of  Canterbury  was  vacant  by  the  death  of 
Honorius,  which  is  dated  by  Bede  on  the  30th  of  September, 
653  ^  :  and  the  vacancy  continued  until  the  26th  of  March, 
655,  when  a  signal  testimony  was  borne  by  King  Erconbert 
and  his  advisers,  and  by  the  clergy  and  monks  of  Canter- 
bury, to  the  reality  of  that  Church- work  of  Birinus  with 
which  Canterbury  had  had  no  concern  whatever.  A  Wessex 
man  called  Frithona,  the  first  *  Saxon '  successor  of  Augus- 
tine, was  consecrated'*  by  Ithamar  of  Rochester  alone, 
without  the  assistance  of  Bertgils,  or  Boniface  as  he  called 
himself,  who  had  succeeded  Thomas  at  Dunwich  in  652, 
and  who,  as  a  born  Kentishman,  would  feel  a  special 
interest  in  the  consecration  of  an  archbishop  ^ ;  but 
perhaps  the  journey  from  the  distant  sea-port  in  Suffolk 
was  too  inconvenient  at  that  time.  Frithona  imitated 
Bertgils  by  adopting  the  name  of  Deusdedit  ^,  which  had 
been  borne  by  a  Pope  from  615  to  618'^,  and  which,  while 
intended  as  an  equivalent  for  ^  Theodore,'  somewhat  reminds 

century  (Duchesne,  Origines  du  Culte,  &c.,  p.  392).  The  long  fast  before 
a  Scotic  dedication  was  characteristic. 

^  Compare  'presbyter  suus'  in  iii.  14.     Above,  p.  186. 

"^  '  He  regulated  it .  .  .  according  to  the  usages  of  Lindisfarne,'  Bede. 

2  Bede,  iii.  20  :  '  Et  ipse  quoque  Honorius/  &c. 

*  Bede,  iii.  20 ;  *  Electus  est  .  .  .  Deusdedit,  de  gente  Occidentalium 
Saxon um.'  Elmham  gives  his  original  Saxon  name  ;  H.  Mon.  S.  Aug. 
p.  192. 

^  Bede,  iii.  20,  '  de  provincia  Cantuariorum.'     Cp.  iv.  5. 

®  An  Irish  missionary  in  Picardy,  named  Fricor,  '  changed  his  name 
into  Adrian,  as  more  pleasing  to  his  auditors;'  Lanigan,  ii.  442.  So 
Succat  became  *  Patricius,'  Willibrord  'Clement,'  Winfrid  'Boniface,' 
Eddi  '  Stephen,'  Biscop  '  Benedict.' 

'  Also  by  an  archbishop  of  Milan  in  Gregory's  time  ;  Greg.  Ep.  xiii.  30. 


200 


Death  of  King  Anna, 


Death  of 
Anna. 


CHAP.  VI.  US,  by  its  very  awkwardness,  of  that  singular  anticipation 
of  Puritanic  names  which  we  find  in  the  ancient  African 
Church  ^.  Under  Deusdedit,  as  under  Honorius,  the  arch- 
bishopric continued  to  be  little  else  than  a  high  dignity 
shut  up  within  a  narrow  area:  except  for  its  hold  upon 
East-Anglia,  it  had  no  practical  effect  on  the  general  life 
and  work  of  the  Church :  it  was  like  a  great  force  lying 
dormant  until  the  epoch  that  was  to  wake  it  into 
energy. 

The  year  of  Cedd's  consecration,  also  distinguished  by  the 
vacancy  at  Canterbury,  was  tragically  marked  by  another, 
and  the  last,  of  Penda's  fatal  victories.  Anna  had  mortally 
offended  him  by  sheltering  Kenwalch :  and  he  now  fell  on 
the  East- Anglians  '  like  a  wolf  on  timorous  sheep,  so  that 
Anna  and  his  host  were  devoured  by  his  sword  in  a  moment, 
and  scarcely  a  man  of  them  survived.'  Such  is  the  vivid 
account  of  Henry  of  Huntingdon  ^.  The  conqueror  allowed 
Ethelhere,  Anna's  brother,  to  reign  as  his  vassal,  and 
employed  him,  in  some  way  unexplained,  to  give  occasion 
for  another  Mercian  invasion  of  Northumbria  in  the  follow- 
ing year,  655  ^.  Oswy  had  done  his  utmost  to  propitiate 
Penda :  beside  the  double  alliance  between  their  houses  *, 
'  he  had  placed  another  son,  Egfrid,  as  a  hostage  in  the 
hands  of  the  Mercian  queen  Kynwise  ^ ; '  he  now  offered  to 
purchase  peace  with  a  gift  of  royal  ornaments,  '  greater 
than  can  be  believed  ^.'  All  was  in  vain :  Penda  was 
resolved,  this   time,  to   '  make  sure '  work :  having  again 

*  Adeodatus,  son  of  St.  Augustine  ;  Adeodatus,  Habetdeus,  and  Quod- 
vultdeus,  in  the  conference  of  Carthage  ;  Deogratias,  bishop  of  Carthage. 
We  also  meet  with  a  deacon  Donadeus  in  Numidia  in  the  time  of 
Gregory  the  Great ;  Ep.  xii.  8. 

^  Hen.  Hunt.  ii.  33.  See  Bede,  iii.  18  :  *  Anna  .  .  .  qui  et  ipse,'  &c. 
Thomas  of  Ely  says  that  Anna's  body  was  in  later  days  transferred  to 
Beodricsworth,  now  Bury  St.  Edmunds  (Angl.  Sacr.  i.  595\ 

^  Bede,  iii.  24  :  'In  quibus  ^dilheri,  .  .  .  auctoc  ipse  belli,'  &c. 

♦  Thus— 
Penda  Oswy 

^  l-_, 

I  Peada  -=  Alchfled      | 

Kyniburga  =  Alchfrid 

'  Bede,  iii.  24  :  *  Nam  alius  filius  ejus  Ecgfrid,'  &c. 

•  'Innumera  et  majora  quam  credi  potest  ornamenta  regia,'  &c. 


Pendas  last  attack  on  Northumbria.     201 

crossed  the  Northumbrian  border,  he  would  not  turn  back,  chap.  vi. 
as  in  633  or  642,  until  he  had  annihilated  Northumbria  as 
a  kingdom,  or,  as  Bede  says,  had  '  exterminated  the  whole 
people,  small  and  great.'  His  host  is  described  in  terms  Battle  of 
which  remind  us  of  the  Syrian  Benhadad's :  thirty  chiefs  g^^j 
of  princely  rank  ^,  including,  it  seems,  the  East- Anglian 
king,  were  serving  under  his  banner;  and  Oswy's  much 
smaller  force  was  diminished  by  the  desertion  of  Ethelwald, 
who,  through  some  personal  grudge,  was  alienated  from  *  his 
uncle  and  his  country/  and  stained  his  father's  memory  by 
*  acting  as  guide  to  the  invaders,'  although,  at  the  last 
moment,  either  compunction  or  cowardice  restrained  him 
from  giving  them  his  aid^.  Thus  the  odds  which  Oswy 
had  to  face  appeared  indeed  desperate.  He  had  recourse  to 
his  religion  :  '  If  the  Pagan  will  not  accept  our  gifts,  let  us 
offer  them  to  Him  who  will — the  Lord  our  God  ^ : '  and 
vowed  that  if  he  should  be  victorious,  he  would  dedicate 
his  daughter  Elfled,  a  babe  of  a  year  old,  to  the  monastic 
life  *,  and  give  twelve  pieces  of  land  for  building  as  many 

^  '•  Triginta  legiones  ducibus  nobilissimis  instructas  .  .  .  Duces  regii 
triginta  qui  ad  auxilium  venerant,'  Bede,  1.  c  '  Cynebearna,'  Chron.  See 
Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  i86,  198  ;  Green,  Making  of  Engl.  p.  301. 

^  See  Lingard,  H.  E.  i.  96.  Bede  takes  the  unfavourable  view,  'even- 
turn  .  .  .  tuto  in  loco  exspectabat.' 

'  '  Si  Paganus,  inquit,  nescit  accipere  nostra  donaria,  offeranius  ei  qui 
novit,  Domino  Deo  nostro.'     Bede,  1.  c. 

*  The  special  case  of  Samuel's  dedication  had  come  to  be  deemed  a  pre- 
cedent. The  second  council  of  Toledo  in  531  had  so  far  guarded  the  free 
agency  of  persons  devoted  in  childhood  to  '  clerical  service,'  as  to  excuse 
them  from  proceeding  to  holy  orders  if  at  eighteen  they  expressed  a  desire 
to  marry.  But  the  Benedictine  movement  encouraged  parents  to  oflfer 
their  young  children  for  monastic  life,  wrapping  their  little  hands  *in 
palla  altaris  *  (Reg.  Bened.  59) ;  and  a  feeling  grew  up  which  gained 
expression  in  c.  49  of  the  fourth  council  of  Toledo,  a.d.  633,  '  Monachum 
aut  paterna  devotio  aut  propria  professio  facit  :  quidquid  horum  fuerit, 
alligatum  tenebit,'  no  regard  being  had  to  the  impossibility  of  ascertaining 
in  childhood  any  real  aptitudes  for  an  avowedly  exceptional  life.  Thus 
in  Cedd's  East-Saxon  monastery  there  was  a  little  boy  who,  on  growing 
up,  found  that  he  had  never  been  baptized  ;  Bede,  iii.  23  :  -35sica,  a  boy 
of  three,  was  bred  up  in  the  religious  house  of  Barking  (Bede,  iv.  8)  ; 
and  the  sick  boy  at  Selsey  (iv.  14).  Bede  was  'given  to  abbot  Benedict ' 
at  seven  (v.  24)  ;  Boniface  entered  a  monastery  about  the  same  age  ; 
Willibrord,  as  an  infant,  was  placed  in  Ripon  monastery ;  and  Odelirius 
so  dedicated  his  son  Ordericus  Vitalis  at  ten  (Ord.  Vital,  xiii.  45). 


202  Battle  of  Winwidfield ; 

religious  houses.  *  Relying  on  Christ  as  their  Leader  ^/  he 
and  his  son  Alchfrid  awaited  the  great  crisis  at  a  place 
described  by  Bede  as  'in  the  region  of  Loidis,  near  the 
river  Winwsed,'  by  Florence  of  Worcester  as  Winwidfield, 
and  by  '  Nennius '  ^  as  the  Field  of  Gai.  This  last  transfers 
the  scene  to  Scotland,  and  represents  Oswy  as  taking  refuge 
in  *  a  city  called  Judeu '  (which  has  been  assumed  to  be  the 
'  city  of  Giudi '  or  Inchkeith)  ^,  and  giving  up  his  treasures 
there  to  Penda,  before  he  resolves  to  risk  a  battle.  Hence 
it  has  been  supposed*  that  Bede's  '  Loidis'  means  Lothian, 
as  if  Penda  had  pursued  Oswy  to  the  northern  extremity  of 
the  Northumbrian  realm  :  and  that  the  '  Winwsed  '  means 
the  Avon  in  Linlithgowshire.  We  cannot  reconcile  this 
with  Bede's  account ;  we  must  assume  that  by  '  Loidis,' 
here  as  in  the  other  passage  in  which  he  mentions  it  ^,  he 
means  the  Leeds  district :  and,  as  in  regard  to  Edwin's 
baptism,  we  have  to  choose  between  the  great  Northumbrian 
historian  and  a  Welsh  writer  of  the  next  century  and  of  far 
inferior  authority,  with  a  strong  turn  for  patriotic  romance  ^. 
Whatever  was  the  spot,  the  armies  met  on  the  15th  of 
November ;  and  the  many  were  scattered  before  the  few. 
The  terrible  old  man,  who  had  slain  so  many,  was  himself 
smitten  down  at  last :  and  the  same  fate  befell  nearly  all 

*  'Perparvum  .  .  .  habens  exercitum,  sed  Christo  duce  confisus.' 
2  C.  64  (ed.  Stev.   ;  also  the  Annales  Cambriae. 

'  Compare  Bedo,  i.  12,  placing  '  Giudi '  in  the  midst  of  the  Firth  of 
Forth.  Rhys,  however,  rejects  the  identification  of  Judeu  with  Giudi, 
and  thinks  it  may  be  a  form  of  Edinburgh,  Celt.  Brit.  pp.  133,  151. 

*  Skene,  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  254.  Cp.  Florence,  *  in  Berniciam.'  See 
too  Rhys,  Celtic  Britain,  p.  133.  He  tries  to  reconcile  Bede  and  the  other 
authorities  by  laying  stress  on  Bede's  '  hoc  bellum  rex  .  .  .  confecit^'  as  if  it 
meant  that  after  the  battle  (in  Scotland)  '  Oswin  ended  the  war  '  (in  York- 
shire). But  this  is  to  strain  Bede's  language  ;  he  is  evidently,  in  this 
sentence,  referring  again  to  the  victory  which  he  had  already  described 
as  an  answer  to  the  king's  vow. 

^  Bede,  ii.  14.  See  above,  p.  138.  The  Winwaed  has  been  supposed  to 
be  the  Aire,  or  the  Went.     See  Whitaker,  Loidis  and  Elmete,  p.  3. 

*  See  Whitley  Stokes,  Tripart.  Life,  i.  p.  cxvii,  on  Nennius.  What  we 
are  told  of  Ethelwald  and  of  Ethelhere  suits  better  with  a  battle  field  in 
Yorkshire  ;  so  does  Bede's  expression  that  Oswy  '  met '  the  '  thirty  legions 
of  Penda's  host '  The  tale  which  transforms  their  thirty  commanders  into 
British  kings,  and  makes  them  share  in  Oswy's  surrendered  treasures, 
may  well  have  grown  out  of  Welsh  '  nationalism.' 


its  historical  importance.  203 

his  auxiliaries  ^,  including  Ethelhere  the  East- Anglian  2.  chap.  vr. 
Again  we  recall  the  story  of  Hebrew  warfare :  the  Winwsed, 
swollen  by  autumnal  rains,  was  to  Penda's  host  what  the 
Kishon  of  old  was  to  Sisera's  ;  it  swept  away  '  many  more 
in  their  flight  than  the  sword  had  destroyed  while  fighting.' 
Hence  came  the  saying  which  handed  down  the  names  of 
the  five  kings  whom  Penda  had  slain,  in  connexion  with  his 
own  final  overthrow  :  '  In  Winwaed  stream  were  avenged  the 
slaughter  of  Anna,  the  slaughter  of  the  kings  Sigebert  and 
Egric,  the  slaughter  of  the  kings  Oswald  and  Edwin  ^.'  It 
was  a  great  day :  it  saved  the  independence  of  Northum- 
bria,  although  it  only  arrested  for  some  four  years  the 
advance  of  Mercia  to  primacy  among  the  kingdoms ;  but 
it  was  far  more  eventful  in  regard  to  higher  interests,  for 
'  with  Penda  fell  Paganism  as  an  organized  secular  force  ^.' 
Since  the  battle  of  Winwidfield,  no  English  ruling  power 
has  formally  disowned  the  faith  of  Christ. 

Oswy  lost  no  time  in  advancing  the  cause  of  that  faith,  Diuma, 
not  only  by  the  punctual  fulfilment  of  his  vow  as  to  the  ^^j!?^,  ^^ 
twelve  monasteries,  and  the  consignment  of  the  infant 
Elfled  to  the  care  of  Hilda  at  Hartlepool  ^,  but  by  efiectually 
promoting  the  extension  of  Christianity  throughout  Mercia. 
He  retained  in  his  own  hands  the  government  of  Mercia 
proper  ^ :  but  the  South  Mercians,  whom  Bede  describes  as 


^  Nennius  says  that  one  of  the  British  kings,  Catgabail,  or  Cadavael, 
escaped,  and  so  got  the  discreditable  name  of  Catguommed,  or  '  Would- 
not-fight.'  Rhys  thinks  he  was  a  rival  of  king  Cadwalader,  son  of  Cad- 
wallon.     Celt.  Brit.  p.  134. 

^  He  was  succeeded  by  his  brother  Ethelwald  (Florence). 

'  Hen.  Hunt.  ii.  34. 

*  Milman,  Lat.  Chr.  ii.  244.  Compare  Freeman,  i.  37 ;  and  the  some- 
what less  decided  language  of  Kemble,  i.  150. 

^  Bede,  iii.  24  :  '  Tunc  rex  Osuiu,  juxta  quod  Domino  voverat,'  &c. 
The  monastic  communities  then  founded  were  to  '  practise  the  heavenly 
warfare  instead  of  the  earthly,  and  to  pray  for  the  eternal  peace  of  that 
nation.'  On  this  use  of  *  warfare,'  as  if  monastic  life  were  (through  its 
continuous  intercessory  prayers)  a  specially  thorough  mode  of  '  fighting 
the  good  fight,'  see  Bede,  iii.  18,  19,  23 ;  iv.  29. 

^  Bede,  iii.  21  :  '  Ipso  autem  occiso,'  &c.,  and  iii.  24  :  '  Idem  autem  rex 
.  .  .  Merciorum  genti  .  .  .  praefuit.'  This  is  implied  in  Bede's  words, 
iii.  21,  'Cum  Osuiu  .  .  .  regnum  ejus  acciperet,*  &c,,  and  iii.  24,  'Quo 
tempore   donavit,'  &c.    The  Chronicle  says,  Peada  became  king  of  the 


204 


Mercian  Bishopric  founded. 


cnxv.  VI. 


Death  of 
Pea  da. 


separated  by  the  Trent  from  the  North  Mercians,  and  who 
were  the  same  as  those  elsewhere  called  the  Mid- Angles  ^ 
were  placed  as  before  under  the  viceroyalty  of  Peada  ^,  who 
obtained  a  bishop  for  all  the  Mercians  ^  in  the  '  Scot '  Diuma, 
already  mentioned  as  one  of  the  four  priests  sent  home 
with  him  by  Finan  in  653.  The  consecration  of  Diuma 
must  be  dated  at  the  beginning  of  656 ;  and  immediately 
afterwards,  according  to  tradition,  Peada  'began  to  build 
a  monastery  to  the  glory  of  Christ  and  St.  Peter  * '  at 
a  place  called  Medeshamstede,  '  the  dwelling-place  in  the 
meadows/  where  in  the  tenth  century  the  town  that  had 
grown  up  around  this  '  first  resting-place  of  Christianity  in 
central  England '  acquired  the  name  of  St.  Peter's  Borough. 
But  Peada,  if,  as  is  probable,  he  had  a  '  share  in  the  act  ^,' 
could  do  no  more  than  plan  this  foundation,  and  select  its 
first  abbot  in  the  person  of  a  monk  named  Saxulf,  rich, 
high-born,  devout,  and  widely  esteemed,  whom  Bede  calls 
the  builder  of  the  monastery  ^.  A  mysterious  crime  soon 
blighted  the  hopes  associated  with  the  noble-spirited  Peada. 
He  was  murdered,  '  as  they  say,  by  the  treachery  of  his  own 
wife,'  the  Northumbrian  princess  Alchfled  '^,  in  the  Easter- 
Mercians  ;  but  this  must  mean,  of  the  South  Mercians.  See  Palgrave, 
p.  cclxxvii. 

^  See  above,  p.  192.  Compare  Bede,  iii.  21,  '  Mediterraneorum  Anglo- 
rum,'  and  iii.  24,  'Australium  Merciorum;'  aad  Cod.  Diplom.  i.  96, 
Ethelbald  '  king  not  only  of  the  Mercians,  but  of  all  the  provinces  which 
are  named  generally  South-Angles.'  Green  says  that  the  old  division  of 
Mercians  into  Northern  and  Southern  *  reappeared '  after  '  the  great 
defeat '  ;  p.  303. 

^  Bede,  iii.  24  :  'Quo  tempore  donavit  praefato  Peadae,'  &c.  It  was  a 
grant  from  his  father's  conqueror. 

^  For,  says  Bede,  iii.  21,  the  paucity  of  bishops  rendered  it  necessary 
that  one  prelate  should  be  set  over  '  duobus  populis,'  Diuma  probably 
fixed  his  seat  at  Repton,  an  old  seat  of  Mercian  royalty. 

*  This  is  from  a  later  addition  to  the  Chronicle.  A  good  deal  of  such 
matter  was  inserted  for  the  honour  of  the  abbey  of  Peterborough.  See 
Bede,  iv.  6,  for  '  Medeshamstedi  in  the  country  of  the  Gyrvians'  (Fen- 
men).  See  above,  p.  181.  See  Smith's  note  in  loc.  and  Monast.  Angl. 
i«  344  j  Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  80. 

^  Stubbs  on  Foundation  of  Peterborough,  p.  7  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs, 
iii.  100. 

^  *  Constructor  et  abbas,'  &c.  ;  Bede,  iv.  6.  He  became  bishop  of  Lich- 
field in  675. 

'  Bede,  iii.  24  :    '  Sed  idem  Peada  .  .  .  proditione,  ut  dicunt,   conjugis 


Murder  of  Sigebert  the  Good,  205 

tide  of  656  ^,  or,  according  to  the  Chronicle,  in  657.     The  chap.  vr. 

event  was  one  of  the  numerous  tragedies  which  had  warned 

the  Saxon  and  Anglian  converts  that  neither  the  adoption 

of  Christianity  as  a  creed,  nor  the  most  consistent  Christian 

goodness,  were  any  security  against  misfortune  and  violent 

death  ^.     And   one  more  warning  of  this  sort  was  given  Murder  of 

some  time  later  in  Essex.     Bishop  Cedd  had  excommuni-  the^Good. 

cated  a  retainer  and  kinsman  of  Sigebert  for  obstinately 

adhering  to  an  unlawful  marriage.     The  king,  disregarding 

the  sentence  ^,  accepted  an  invitation  to  the  offender's  house, 

but  met  with  Cedd  on   his  return.     Trembling,  he  leapt 

from  his  horse,  and  knelt  to  the  bishop  for  pardon :  but 

Cedd  exhibited  all  the  austerity  of  Columban.     Touching 

the  king  with  a  wand  which  he  held,  he  predicted  that 

Sigebert  would  die  in  the  very  house  where  he  had  been 

feasting  with  a  reprobate  man.     And,  in  effect,  this  man 

and  his  brother  murdered  Sigebert,  and  when  questioned, 

gave  no  other  reason  for  the  deed  than  that  he  had  become 

too  ready  to  pardon  and  spare  his  enemies  ^ ;  a  significant 

indication   of   the    irreconcilable   opposition   between    the 

Christian   and   the    heathen- Saxon   character.     'The   new 

lore,'  it  would  be  said,  '  has  made  the  king  womanish,  too 

mild  to  rule  over  men.'     Sigebert  the  Good  was  succeeded 

by  his   brother  Swidhelm  ^,  who  was   baptized  by  Cedd 

himself  at   Kendlesham   in  Suffolk.     This   royal   baptism 

exhibited  the  bishops  of  Essex  and  of  East-Anglia  as  on 

suae.'  Bade  was  not  likely  to  have  a  prejudice  against  Alchfled.  Florence 
adopts  the  stoiy. 

^  So  it  is  usually  dated.  It  happened,  says  Bede,  'proximo  vere*  after 
Oswy  had  given  Peada  'regnum  australium  Merciorum'  ;  wliich  he  did, 
it  seems,  upon  the  death  of  Penda  in  November,  655. 

^  Compare  Edwin,  Oswald,  Eorpwald,  Sigebert  the  Learned,  Oswin, 
Anna. 

'  No  one  was  to  visit  him  or  eat  with  him  ;  Bede,  iii.  22.  Cp.  Diet. 
Chr.  Antiq.  i.  640.  For  Columba's  excommunication  of  some  '  persecu- 
tors of  churches,'  cp.  Adamn.  ii.  24. 

*  Bede,  1.  c.  :  '  Quod  ille  nimium  suis  parcere  soleret  inimicis,  et  factas 
ab  eis  injurias  mox  obsccrantibus  placida  mente  demitteret.'  They  were 
'comites.'  See  above,  p.  187.  Perhaps  the  fierce  propagandism  of  'St. 
Olaf '  may  have  been  connected  with  a  resolution  to  show  his  people  that 
Christianity  had  not  abated  his  vigour. 

*  After  Swidhelm  Essex  became  subject  to  Mercia. 


2o6  Sf.  Botiilf, 

CHAP.  VI.  brotherly  terms ;  and  Ethelwold,  the  East- Anglian  king, 
brother  and  successor  of  Ethelhere,  acted  as  sponsor  to  the 
East-Saxon,  and  '  received  him  as  he  came  np  out  of  the 
holy  font  ^!  It  was  about  two  years  since  the  East- Anglian 
Christians  had  heard  with  interest  of  the  foundation  of 
a  monastery  on  the  Gallic  model  among  their  neighbours 
the  northern  '  Gyrvians '  of  South  Lincolnshire.  The 
founder  was  Botulf ;  the  place,  Ikanho,  is  usually  identi- 
fied with  '  Botulf's  town '  or  Boston,  or  with  the  neighbour- 
ing village  of  Kirton.  The  foundation  is  dated  in  654  2, 
and  King  Anna's  successor  Ethelhere  is  said  to  have  used 
influence  in  its  favour  with  a  certain  *  South-Anglian  '  king, 
or  rather  sub-king,  called  Ethelmund,  whose  sisters  Botulf 
had  met  in  Gaul,  and  who  had  some  of  Botulf's  kinsmen  in 
his  service.  Botulf  asked  simply  to  have  a  piece  of  un- 
occupied land  given  to  him  :  his  request  was  granted,  and 
he  chose  Ikanho  because  it  was  desolate.  Monks  gathered 
around  him,  to  whom  he  gave  a  Rule  compiled  from  '  old 
and  new '  authorities :  the  fame  of  his  learning  and  piety 
was  wide-spread  when,  about  670,  Ceolfrid,  afterwards 
abbot  of  Jarrow,  paid  him  a  visit  ^. 

The  death  of  Peada  did  not  arrest  the  mission-work  in 

South  Mercia :  Diuma  '  in  a  short  time  won  not  a  few  to 

the  Lord,  and  died  among  the  Mid- Angles  in  the  country 

called   Infeppingum' — a    district   which    cannot    now   be 

Cellach,     identified.     He   was   succeeded   by   another  '  Scottish '   or 

S?Mer-^  Irish   priest,  named   Cellach,  who,  like   Diuma   and   like 

cians.         Ccdd,  was  consecrated  by  Finan.     But  '  when  three  years 

Revolt  of   }^^^  elapsed  from  the  slaughter  of  King  Penda  ^',  that  is,  at 

Wulfhere  earliest,  at  the  close  of  658,  three  Mercian  chiefs  revolted 

^^^'         against  the   direct  government   exercised  by  Oswy  over 

their   country.      Observe    the    irrepressible    and    manful 

sympathy  which   the  Northumbrian  Bede  here   indicates 

'  See  above,  p.  1 70. 

*  Chronicle,  and  Florence.    See  the  Life  of  St.  Botulf  in  Act.  SS.  Bened. 
saec.  iii.  i.  4,  and  Alb.  Butler,  June  17. 

^  Anon.  Hist,  of  Abbots  of  Jarrow,    ap.  Bed.       '  Singularis  vitae   et 
doctrinae  virum,'  &c.     Cambridge  has  a  church  of  St.  Botulf. 

*  '•  Completis  autemtribus  annis,'  &c. ;  Bede,  iii.  24.     But  the  Chronicle 
dates  Wulfhere's  accession  in  657,  Florence  in  659. 


Wiilfhere^  King  of  Mercians,  207 

for  a  patriotic  movement  against  Northumbrian  supremacy,  chap.  vi. 
'  They  drove  out  the  ealdormen  of  a  king  who  was  none  of 
theirs,  and  bravely  regained  at  once  their  boundaries  and 
their  freedom :  they  lifted  up,  as  king,  Wulfhere,  son  of 
Penda,  a  young  man  whom  they  had  been  guarding  in  con- 
cealment :  and  thus  being  free,  with  a  king  of  their  own, 
they  rejoiced  to  serve  Christ  the  true  King  ^!  This  is  one 
of  the  noblest  sentences  in  Bede's  History,  and  is  the  more 
impressive  because  we  have  no  evidence  that  Oswy  had 
played  the  tyrant  over  Mercia ;  what  was  done,  and  what 
Bede  thus  describes,  was  done  purely  for  the  sake  of 
national  independence.  Thus  chosen  as  a  national  monarch, 
Wulfhere  reigned  vigorously  ^  for  seventeen  years  :  he  is 
described  as  '  the  first  king  of  the  Mercians  who  received 
the  faith  and  the  laver  of  holy  regeneration  'V  Peada  having 
been  only  under-king  of  part  of  Mercia.  Wulfhere  estab- 
lished his  supremacy  over  the  East-Saxons,  and  reconquered 
Lindsey  from  Northumbria.  He  married  Ermenild,  daughter 
of  Erconbert  of  Kent;  their  daughter  Werburga  became 
a  directress  of  Mercian  nunneries,  and  the  minster  of 
Chester  grew  up  around  her  shrine  ^  One  of  Wulf here's 
brothers,  named  Merewald,  ruled  Hecana  or  Herefordshire  ^ 

^  Bede,  iii.  24 :  '  Fines  suos  fortiter,'  &c.  Mark  the  word  '  levato ' ; 
and  &ee  Kemble,  i.  154.  Compare  the  lifting-up  of  Alaric  on  a  shield, 
Gibbon,  iv.  31.  So  the  Neustrians  proclaimed  Sigebert  in  575,  '  impositum 
super  clypeo ; '  Greg.  Tur.  iv.  52.  So  the  Spanish  Visi-goths  inaugurated 
the  leader  of  their  host ;  Palgrave,  Eng.  Comm.  p.  129. 

^  He  *  inherited  his  father's  courage '  (virtutis^i  ;  Hen.  Hunt.  ii.  34. 
His  reign  finally  put  a  stop  to  Northumbrian  overlordship  ;  Green's 
Making  of  Engl.  p.  306. 

^  Florence,  a.  675. 

*  For  St.  Werburh,  or  Werburga,  see  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  iv.  1174,  Feb.  3. 
She  died  about  700.  Seven  of  the  churches  dedicated  to  her  are  within 
the  old  Mercian  realm  (one,  for  instance,  at  Derby)  :  the  other  six  have 
been  supposed  to  record  'strategic  movements  '  of  the  great  Mercian  king 
Ethelbald  in  the  next  century,  one  being  as  remote  as  Plymouth  Sound 
(Kerslake,  Vestiges  of  Supremacy  of  Mercia,  reprinted  from  Transact,  of 
Bristol  and  Gloucestershire  Archaeological  Society).  She  was  at  first 
a  nun  at  Ely.  Her  relics  were  probably  carried  to  Chester  during  the 
Danish  troubles. 

*  Kemble,  i.  150  ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  198.  Florence  identifies  the 
Hecanas  with  the  Magesetas,  or  Maegsetan  ^H.  M.  B.  621),  whom  Kemble 
treats  as  a  portion  of  them,  i.  80. 


2o8  Churxh  work  under  Wulfhere, 

CHAP.  vL  as  under-king,  married  Ermenburga  the  niece  of  Erconbert, 
and  became  the  father  of  St.  Mildred  and  two  other 
daughters,  and  of  Merewin,  a  boy  of  remarkable  piety '. 

Medes-       xj^^  kingf  is  credited  with  carrying:  out  the  intentions  of 

ham  stead.  «/      o 

his  brother  as  to  Medeshamstede ;  though  the  details  of  the 
consecration  of  the  minster  and  the  speeches  ascribed  to 
Wulfhere  ^  are  hardly  more  trustworthy  than  the  later  and 
calumnious  legend  which  represented  him  as  killing  his  two 
sons  for  turning  Christians,  and  then,  in  penitence,  building 
the  abbey  of  '  Burgh  l'  We  do  know  that,  in  659,  he  estab- 
lished Trumhere,  abbot  of  Gilling,  in  the  Mercian  bishopric, 
when  Cellach,  probably  in  disgust  at  the  separation  of 
Mercia  from  Northumbria,  had  'abandoned  the  episcopal 
office,'  and  returned  to  Hy,  and  thence  to  Ireland*. 
Trumhere,  though  an  Englishman,  was  of  Scotic  conse- 
cration like  his  predecessors  ^ ;  and  so  apparently  was 
Jaruman,  who  succeeded  him  in  662. 
Agilbert         Another  abandonment  of  a  bishopric  took  place  in  660, 

leaves  .  i-i.-'iii' 

Wessex.  Under  Circumstances  which  give  ifc  considerable  importance. 
Agilbert  had  been  successful  as  bishop  of  the  West-Saxons 
in  all  respects  but  one.  It  was  from  him  probably  that 
Kenwalch  learned  to  be  zealous  for  the  '  Catholic  Easter  ^.' 
But  Agilbert  had  not  acquired  the  Saxon  tongue ;  and 
Kenwalch,  who  knew  no  other,  became  '  weary  of  his 
foreign   dialect ''^j   and   clandestinely   introduced    into    the 


^  Above,  p.  193.  Ermenburga,  or  Domneva,  was  daughter  of  the  Kentish 
fcub-king  Ermenred,  a  son  of  Eadbald,  and  sister  of  the  princes  Ethelred 
and  Ethelbert,  slain  by  Thunor.  Of  her  daughters,  Mildred  became 
abbess  of  Minster,  Milburga  of  Wenlock  :  a  third  was  Mildgith. 

^  See  them  as  in^ertiors  in  Chron.  a.  657.  Cp.  Kemble,  ii.  243,  and 
Bp.  Stubbs,  Foundation  of  Peterborough,  p.  7. 

^  This  mj'th  was  set  forth  in  stained  glass  along  the  western  cloister  of 
Peterborough  abbey  ;  Mon.  Anglic,  i.  377.  See  the  strange  descriptive 
verses,  one  couplet  being, 

'Wulfhere  in  woodness  his  sword  out  drew, 
And  both  his  sons  anon  he  slew.' 

*  Bede,  iii.  21  :  '  Reversus  est  ad  insulam  Hii,  ubi  plurimorum  caput  et 
arcem  Scotti  habuere  coenobium  ; '  and  iii.  24,  *  vivens  ad  Scottiam  rediit.' 

^  Bede,  iii.  24  :  '  de  natione  quidem  Anglorum,'  &c. 

«  See  Eddi,  Vit.  Wilfr.  7. 

^  Bede,  iii.  7 :  '  Tandt  m  rex,  qui   Saxonum  tantum  linguam  noverat, 


Agilbert  leaves  Wessex,  209 

province  another  bishop  who  spoke  Saxon,  named  Wini, —  chap.  vi. 
who  himself  also  had  been  ordained  in  Gaul :  and  dividing 
the  province  into  two  dioceses '—  here,  as  in  other  passages, 
Bede  uses  'parochia'  in  this  its  older  sense ^ — 'he  assigned 
to  Wini  an  episcopal  seat  in  the  city  of  Winchester,'  where 
a  minster  had  been  hallowed  twelve  years  before  by 
Birinus.  '  Whereupon  Agilbert,  being  highly  offended  that 
the  king  should  do  this  without  consulting  him,  returned 
into  Gaul,  and  having  accepted  the  bishopric  of  the  city 
of  Paris,  died  there  an  old  man  and  full  of  days.'  This 
sentence  gives  an  inaccurate  impression;  for  we  find 
Agilbert  four  years  afterwards  in  Northumbria,  and  Bede 
speaks  of  him  on  that  occasion  as  bishop  of  the  West- 
Saxons^;  and,  moreover,  the  see  of  Paris  in  660  and  for 
some  time  afterwards  was  filled  by  Chrodobert  ^,  and  two 
bishops  intervened  between  him  and  Agilbert  ^  ;  so  that  the 
latter's  accession  must  be  referred  to  a  later  period.  The 
inconsiderate  arbitrariness  of  Kenwalch,  in  this  transaction, 
is  what  might  be  expected  in  a  prince  whose  impatient 
temper  had  not  been  subdued  by  his  sufferings  or  his  con- 


pertaesus   barbarae  loquelae,'  &c.     Milner  understands  this  of  a  mere 
foreign  pronunciation.  Hist.  Winch,  i.  73  ;  but  Bede  implies  more. 

^  '  In  duas  parochias.'  Comp.  Bede,  v.  18  :  '  in  duas  parochias  ...  ad 
civitatis  Ventanae  parochiam .'  See  the  second  decree  of  the  Council  of 
Hertford,  Bede,  iv.  5  ;  and  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  29,  34,  Ep.  Egb.  8  ;  and 
Boniface,  Ep.  63,  '  ut  .  .  .  epiiscopus  parochiam  suam  .  .  .  circumeat;' 
and  'Si  quod  in  sua  dioecesi  corrigere  .  .  .  nequiverit.'  Foi-  trapoiKia  as  the 
aggregate  of  Christians  dwelling  in  one  place  or  district  under  the  care  of 
a  single  chief  pastor,  see  Euseb.  i.  i,  ii.  24,  iii.  14,  &c.  ;  Bingham,  b.  ix. 
2.  I  ;  Diet.  Chr.  Antiq.  ii.  1554.     See  below  on  Council  of  Hertford. 

^  Bede,  iii.  25,  v.  19.  Eddi  calls  him  at  that  time  '  transmarinus 
episcopus,'  but  this  may  mean  only  a  bishop  of  foreign  birth  and  conse- 
cration ;  Vit.  Wilfr.  9. 

^  Mabillon,  Ann.  Bened.  i.  470,  on  a  document  signed  by  him  in  663  : 
and  he  had  been  bishop  when  Chlodwig  II  died  in  659  ;  ib.  i.  459. 

*  Sigebrand  and  Importunus  ;  Mabillon,  i.  478.  The  former  was  mur- 
dered in  664.  The  latter  witnessed  a  '  privilegium  *  for  a  nunnery  at 
Soissons,  June  26,  666  ;  ib.  482.  Dubois,  therefore,  must  be  wrong  in 
dating  Agilbert's  accession  to  the  see  of  Paris  in  664,  immediately  on  his 
return  to  Gaul  after  the  conference  of  Whitby  ;  Hist.  Eccl.  Paris,  i.  204. 
We  are  told  that,  in  680,  he  and  the  bishop  of  Reims  were  employed  by 
Ebroin  to  lure  a  rival  into  his  power ;  Fredeg.  Chron.  continuat.  97.  He 
is  said  to  have  died  on  Oct.  11  (on  which  day  he  was  venerated),  in  680. 

P 


210  South-Saxons  still  Heathen, 

CHAP.  VI.  version,  and  whose  sense  of  royal  power  had  been  enhanced 
by  his  recent  military  success  in  driving  the  Britons  beyond 
the  river  Parret  ^.  It  will  appear  that  his  choice  of  Wini 
was  less  fortunate  than  his  former  choice  of  Agilbert ;  and 
though  Winchester  may  have  been  a  more  desirable  seat 
for  a  West-Saxon  bishopric  than  a  little  town  so  near  the 
Mercian  frontier  as  Dorchester  then  was,  it  cannot  be  said 
that  the  old  home  of  West- Sax  on  royalty  has  reason  to  be 
proud  of  its  first  bishop.  Kenwalch  had  soon  enough 
on  his  hands  to  make  him  forget  ecclesiastical  compli- 
cations ;  for  in  66i  ^  Wulfhere  invaded  Wessex,  and  laid 
waste  the  Berkshire  country  as  far  as  Ashdown ;  and  the 
death  of  Cuthred,  the  lord  of  that  territory,  which  is 
assigned  to  the  same  year,  probably  took  place  in  this 
Mercian  border-war.  Wulfhere  also  got  possession  of  a 
Hampshire  district  occupied  by  the  Meonwaras  ^,  and  made 
Conquest  the  important  conquest  of  the  Isle  of  Wigfht^  which  had 
by  Wuif-  belonged  to  Wessex  ever  since  Cerdic  subdued  it  in  530. 
here.  Both   these   acquisitions   he   handed  over  to  Ethel walch, 

king  of  the  South-Saxons  ^,  who  had  been  baptized  in 
Mercia,  'by  the  persuasion  and  in  the  presence  of  Wulf- 
here,' and  had  then  become  Wulfhere's  godson.  His  wife 
Eaba  was  already  a  Christian :  she  came  from  the  Hwiccian 
country,  which  consisted  chiefly  of  Worcestershire  and 
Gloucestershire  ^ :  and  its  rulers,  Eanhere  and  his  brother 
Eanf rid,  Eaba's  father,  had  become  '  Christians  with  their 
people.'     But  the   king   and  queen  of   the  South-Saxons 

^  Chron.  a.  658  on  the  battle  of  Pen.     See  Freeman,  i.  385. 

^  See  Chron.  a.  66 r,  and  Florence.  Henry  of  Huntingdon  says  that 
Wulfhere  '  traversed  his  enemy's  land  with  a  great  host,'  and  conquered 
Wight  ;  ii.  35.  Ethelwerd,  ii.  7,  transfers  the  victory  at  Ashdown  to 
Kenwalch. 

^  The  Meonwaras*  district  ran  from  Southampton  Water  to  the  South 
Downs,  See  Camden,  Britan.  i.  146  :  '  Their  countiy  is  now  divided  into 
three  hundreds  .  .  .  Meansborow,  Eastmean,  Weastmean.'  They  were 
Jutes  ;  Pearson,  Hist.  Engl.  i.  106  ;  Green,  p.  385. 

*  Chron.  1.  c. ;  Lappenberg,  i.  248. 

'  See  Bede,  iv.  13  :  '  Erat  autem  rex,'  &c.  '■  His  policy  was  to  establish 
a  counterpoise  to  the  West-Saxon  kingdom  ; '  Milner,  Hist.  Winch,  i.  74. 

*  See  above,  p.  85,  and  Freeman,  i.  35  ;  and  comp.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist, 
i.  186,  and  Kemble,  i.  149,  on  the  long  continuance  of  a  special  kingship 
of  the  Hwiccas.     Cp.  Bede,  iv.  23. 


ColmaUj  Bishop  of  Lindisfarne,         211 

could  produce  no  effect  on  the  Paganism  of  their  kingdom  ^,  chap.  vi. 
which  had  never  been  evangelized  from  Kent  or  from 
Wessex,  and  was  detained  by  marshes  and  by  the  '  Andred ' 
forest  in  a  peculiarly  barbaric  isolation  2.  One  man  of  its 
race,  named  Damian,  had  indeed  not  only  become  a  Christian, 
but  had  succeeded  Ithamar  as  bishop  of  Rochester  in  656^: 
but,  speaking  generally  of  the  realm  of  Sussex,  its  time, 
in  a  Christian  sense,  was  yet  to  come ;  and  to  come  from 
that  distant  North-country  to  which  our  story  now 
returns. 

Finan  died,  after  a  ten  years'  episcopate,  in  this  year  Colman  of 
661 ;  and  was  succeeded  by  Colman  ^,  also  of  Irish  extraction  ^\!Jj^^^" 
and  Scotic  ordination^,  and  also  a  man  of  simple  and 
austere  piety,  and  of  an  'innate  prudence'  which  won 
Oswy's  regard^;  but  not  destined  to  a  peaceful  and  suc- 
cessful episcopate,  such  as  Finan's  on  the  whole  had  been. 
A  change,  in  fact,  was  coming  over  the  mind  of  the  great 
ecclesiastical  province  which  looked  to  Lindisfarne  as  its 
centre.  Deliverance  from  the  terrors  and  anxieties  which 
Penda's  name  had  aroused,  and  which  passed  away  at 
his  death,  had  given  the  Northumbrian  Church  a  time 
of  'refreshing'  and  of   spiritual  revival.     There  was,  all 

*  Bede,  iv.  13  r  *  Caeterum  tota  provincia  Australium  Saxonum  divini 
nominis  et  fidei  erat  ignaraJ 

^  Rocks  and  woods  had  made  it  '  inexpugnabilis ' ;  Eddi,  Vit.  Wilfr.  41 ; 
Lappenberg,  i.  106.  The  Chronicle  says  (a.  893)  that  in  the  reign  of 
Alfred,  the  *  Andread-weald '  was  more  than  a  hundred  miles  long,  and 
thirty  broad  ;  but  in  this  statement,  says  Guest,  ii.  42,  there  is  '  some 
exaggeration.'  The  name  of  Andred  is  significant — *  the  land  without 
dwellings/  The  Weald  of  Kent  and  Sussex  is  the  remains  of  this  forest  ; 
Taylor's  Words  and  Places,  p.  360.  It  extended  from  the  neighbourhood 
of  Winchester  to  the  border  of  Romney  Marsh.  See  a  map  in  Guest, 
ii.  147.  For  other  forests,  as  Wyre,  Arden,  Sherwood,  see  Green,  Mak. 
of  Engl.  pp.  II,  75. 

^  Bede,  iii.  20.     Damian  was  consecrated  by  archbishop  Deusdedit. 

*  Bede,  iii.  25  :  '  Defuncto  autem  Finano,'  &c.  The  name  was  common 
among  Irishmen  of  that  period ;  Lanigan,  ii.  216,  iii.  2.  Several  instances 
occur  in  Tighernach.  A  St.  Colman  was  the  first  bishop  of  Cloyne,  the 
rural  South-Irish  see  which  Berkeley  has  made  illustrious. 

*  Bede  says  that  Colman  had  been  appointed  (destinatus)  from  Hy  ; 
iv.  4.  But  he  also  indicates  that  he  had  come  originally  from  Ireland  ; 
iii.  26. 

'  Bede,  iii.  26  :  '  Multum  namque  eumdem,'  &c. 

P  1 


212  English  Students  in  Ireland. 

CHAP.  VI.  around,  a  stirring   of  ecclesiastical  life,  which,  however, 
in  its  more  vigorous  growths,  was  not  likely  to  be  content 
with  the  somewhat  narrow  and  homely  type  represented 
by  the  Scotic  traditions  of  Lindisfarne.     True,  there  was 
a  strong  attachment  in  many  minds  to  those  traditions ; 
and  many  persons  of  high  as  well  as  of  low  birth  actually 
went  over  to  settle  in  Ireland,  for  the  sake  of  monastic 
self-devotion,    or    of    theological    study  ^.     Among    these 
English    students    were    two    young    men    of    'eorl-kin,' 
Ethelhun  and  Egbert,  the  latter  of  whom,  having  edified 
the  Irish  by  his  teaching  and  his  example,  and  persuaded 
the  monks  of  Hy  to  adopt  the  Catholic  Easter,  died  a  few 
years  before  Bede  wrote  his  work  ^.     Colman  might  think 
that  such  an  appreciation  of  Irish  learning  and  sanctity 
promised    well.     Moreover,    there    were    in    Northumbria 
monasteries    newly    founded,    in    which    the    rules    and 
practices  of  Aidan  were  held  sacred  and  all-sufficient ;  the 
six  in  Bernicia  and  the  six  in  Deira  which  commemorated 
the  day  of  Winwidfield,  the  house  at  Gilling,  a  monument 
of   royal   penitence, — another   at   Tynemouth,   where   the 
monks    had    to    contend    with    the    doggedness    of    half- 
Christianized  rustics,  who  complained  that  '  old  rites  had 
been  taken  away,  and  that  no  one  knew  how  to  observe 
the  new  ones  ^ ; '   the  community  established  by  Cedd  at 
Lastingham;   Heiu's  religious   house  near  Tadcaster,  and 
Founda-     her  earlier  foundation  at  Hartlepool*;  and,  more  famous 
Whitby-     ^^  ^^^'  ^^^  community  which  Hilda  had  planted  in  657-8 
on  an  estate  of  ten  hydes  or  *  familiae  ^  '  at  Streanseshalch, 

^  See  above,  p.  184.  Northumbrians  would  probably  resort  first  to 
St.  Comgairs  great  monastery  at  Bangor  in  Ulster  (then  a  century  old), 
and  to  the  sacred  city  of  Armagh,  a  third  part  of  which  was  occupied  by 
'Saxon*  students;  M*=Gee,  Hist.  Irel.  i.  49.  Irish  monasteries  were  sets 
of  huts  of  beehive  shape,  centering  in  a  church  and  other  buildings  (includ- 
ing a  hospice),  and  having  an  earthen  '  rath  '  or  a  stone  '  cashel  *  by  way 
of  fortification  and  enclosure.  The  greater  monasteries  had  1.500  or  even 
3,000  monks.  ^  Bede,  iii.  4,  27  ;  iv.  3  ;  v.  9,  22. 

^  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  3.  See  Stevenson's  Chron.  of  Abingdon,  vol.  ii. 
p.  xxxiv. 

*  See  above,  p.  i88.  The  cemetery  of  this  ancient  monastery  was  dis- 
covered in  a  field  called  Cross  Close  in  1833  ;  Hiibner,  Inscr.  Brit.  p.  69. 

*  Bede,  iii.  24  :  *  Quae  post  biennium  comparata  possefesione,'  &c.    lb. 


Monasticism  in  Northumbria,  213 

or,  as  the  Chronicler  writes  it,  *  Streoneshalh  V  which  we  chap.  vi. 
had  better  designate  by  its  familiar  Danish  name  of  Whitby. 
In  this  house,  as,  according  to  some,  at  Kildare  2,  and  after- 
wards at  Coldingham,  Ely,  Barking,  Wimborne,  Repton, 
and  in  some  great  houses  on  the  Continent  •'',  the  nuns  and 
monks  formed  a  '  double  foundation,  a  lady  abbess  being 
set  over  both,  the  former  always  taking  precedence  * ' :  and 
Hilda,  whom  all  that  knew  her  called  'Mother,'  taught 
the  inmates  'to  practise  thoroughly  all  virtues,  but  especially 
peace  and  love ;  so  that  after  the  pattern  of  the  primitive 
Church,  no  one  there  was  rich  and  no  one  was  poor,  but  all 
had  all  things  in  common,  for  nothing  seemed  to  be  the 
property  of  any  individual^.'  Further  north,  a  little 
nunnery  was  established  about  this  time,  on  the  banks 
of  the  Derwent,  at  a  place  which  takes  its  name  of  Ebchester 
from  the  foundress,  a  half-sister  of  Oswald  and  of  Oswy  ^, 
well  known  to  us  in  Oxford  from  the  title  of  one  of  our 
churches, — that  'Ebbe'  who  afterwards  founded  a  double 
convent  at  Coldingham,  close  to  the  promontory  still  called 
St.  Abb's  Head.  If  we  look  beyond  the  present  Border 
into  a  country  then  strictly  English*^,  we  are  attracted 
by  a  religious  house  organized  on  the  Lindisfame  model, 
and  situated  in  a  valley  which  the  genius  of  Scofct  has 
made   peerless   throughout  Britain.     On   the   upper  road  Melrose. 

iv.  23  :  '■  Cum  ergo  aliquot  annos  .  .  .  huic  monasterio  praeeset,  contigit 
earn  suscipere  etiam  construendum  .  .  .  monasterium,*  &c. 

^  Bede's  interpretation  (iii.  25),  '  Sinus  Fari,'  has  been  called  '  unac- 
countable.' See,  however,  Atkinson's  Memorials  of  Old  Whitby,  p.78ff. 
Possibly  '•  streon,'  as  used  for  '  strong'  or  'strength,'  might  be  applied  to 
a  watch  tower  (which  might  also  be  described  as  a  pharos,  Bede,  i.  2), 
and  *  halch '  or  '  halh '  might  mean  a  '  hollow '  running  down  to  a  har- 
bour-mouth.    If  so,  the  name  would  be  very  apposite  to  the  locality. 

^  Haddan's  Remains,  p.  277  ;  Todd's  St.  Patrick,  p,  12.  But  see  Lanigan, 
i.  410,  414.     He  thinks  that  the  'monks'  of  Kildare  were  clerics. 

^  At  Autun,  Brie,  Remiremont,  Laudun,  Fontevrault,&c.  See  Mabillon, 
Ann.  Bened.  i.  pp.  315,  382,  &c.  ;  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  214  ;  Stubbs, 
Const.  Hist.  i.  258.  See  Theodore's  Penitential,  b.  ii.  c.  6.  s,  8,  disapprov- 
ing of  any  extension  of  this  *  custom  ' ;  and  cp.  2nd  Nic.  Syn.  can.  20. 

*  Kitchin,  Hist.  Fr.  i.  252. 

^  Bede,  iv.  23  (the  chapter  on  St.  Hilda).  At  Whitby  she  was  long 
spoken  of  as  '  the  Lady  Hilda.'     See  Atkinson,  p.  15. 

^  Bede,  iv.  19 ;  Vit.  Cuthb.  10. 

'  See  Freeman,  i.  36,  123,  on  Lothian. 


214  Early  life  of  Cuthbert, 

CHAP.  VI.  from  Dryburgh  to  Melrose  there  is  a  point  where  one  looks 
down  on  a  wooded  projection  of  land,  almost  encircled  by 
the  Tweed  ^.  This  is  Old  Melrose,  to  the  east  of  its  younger 
and  world-renowned  namesake ;  but  it  is  memorable  as  the 
site  of  a  humble  monastery  where,  in  66 1,  holy  men  prayed 
and  taught,  and  one  young  monk  was  unconsciously  pre- 
paring for  a  life  which  made  him  the  great  popular  saint 
of  Northern  England.  Eata,  of  whom  we  shall  hear  much, 
was  abbot:  he  had  been  one  of  those  twelve  boys  whom 
Aidan,  in  the  early  days  of  his  episcopate,  had  received 
from  their  parents  to  be  '  instructed  in  Christ  2,'  and  through 
life  he  was  true  to  his  old  training,  being,  as  Bede  de- 
scribes him,  '  the  gentlest  and  simplest  man  in  the  world  ^.' 
Under  him,  acting  as  '  praepositus '  or  prior,  was  Boisil, 
whom  Bede  calls  '  a  priest  of  great  virtues  and  of  a  pro- 
phetic spirit,'  and  whose  name  is  still  perpetuated  in  the 

Cuthbert.  little  town  of  St.  Boswell's.  About  ten  years  before,  in 
the  beginning  of  the  winter  of  65 1  \  there  had  come  to 
Melrose  a  robust  youth  ^  with  a  servant  who  held  his 
horse  and  spear  ^  when  he  had  dismounted  in  order  to 
pray  in  the  church.  His  name  was  Cuthbert.  From  his 
eighth  year  he  had  lived  in  the  house  of  a  widow  named 

^  '  Quod  Tuidi  fluminis  circumflexu  maxima  ex  parte  clauditur  ; '  Bede, 
V.  12.     Scott's  description  of  the  western  site  in  '  The  Eve  of  St.  John,' 

'  Where  fair  Tweed  flows  round  holy  Melrose,' 
might  apply  still  better  to  the  eastern. 

^  Bede,  iii.  26.    Above,  p.  161. 

^  Bede,  iv.  2,7. 

*  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  5.  This  '  Life  '  was  compiled  with  special  care,  and 
before  publication  submitted  to  friends  of  St.  Cuthbert,  and  finally  read 
and  examined  for  two  days  by  the  Lindisfarne  community,  under  bishop 
Eadfrid.  The  Anon.  Vit.  Cuthb.  in  Bede's  Works,  vi.  357  ff.,  was  also 
written  under  Eadfrid  but  earlier.  The  author  had  known  Cuthbert 
at  Melrose,  and  had  received  some  information  as  to  his  boyhood  from 
bishop  '  Tuma '  (probably  Tuda).  The  legend  of  his  Irish  birth,  as  the  son 
of  an  Irish  king's  daughter,  is  Irish,  and  is  confuted  by  Bede's  words  in 
the  prologue  to  his  poem  '  De  miraculis  S.  Cuthberti '  (Works,  i.  3) 
describing  him  as  born  in  Britain.  See  Lanigan,  iii.  88,  and  Plummer's 
note  on  Bede,  iv.  27. 

^  '  Adolescens,'  Bede,  V.  C.  4;  'robustus  corpore,'  6;  'of  full  age,' 
Vit.  An. 

*  Bede,  V.  C.  6.  The  Anon.  Vit.  says  he  had  once  served  '  in  castris/ 
apparently  in  the  Northumbrian  defensive  war  against  Penda. 


Melrose  and  Ripon.  215 

Kenspid,  whom  he  used  to  call  '  mother '  \  As  a  younger  chap.  vi. 
boy,  he  had  been  remarkable  for  high  spirits,  and  had 
excelled  in  all  bodily  exercises  ^ :  the  solitary  hours  spent 
in  tending  sheep,  on  the  hills  beside  the  Leader,  had  opened 
his  mind  to  serious  thought ;  and  a  dream,  which  he  took 
to  be  a  vision,  occurring  on  the  night  of  Aidan's  death,  had 
determined  him  to  enter  a  monastery  \  The  fame  of  Boisil 
drew  him  to  Helrose :  and  Boisil,  standing  at  the  gate 
as  he  came  near,  said  to  others  who  wsre  present,  ^  Behold 
a  servant  of  .the  Lord^ ! '  He  soon  surpassed  all  the 
brethren  in  studies,  vigils,  prayers,  still  more  in  manual 
work :  only,  we  are  told,  he  '  could  not  endure  so  much 
abstinence  from  food,'  lest  the  strength  required  for  labour 
should  be  diminished  ^.  When  Eata  received  from  Alchf rid, 
who  had  succeeded  the  traitor  Ethelwald  as  sub-king 
of  Deira,  an  estate  of  thirty  or  forty  hydes  at  Ripon,  for 
the  erection  of  a  monastery,  Cuthbert  was  among  the 
brethren  sent  to  form  the  new  settlement,  and  appointed 
to  act  as  hospitaller^;  but  at  the  time  of  Colman's  arrival 
the  monks  had  just  given  up  their  abode,  rather  than 
accept,  at  Alchfrid's  bidding,  the  continental  Easter  rule 

^  She  was  alive  when  the  Anon,  Vit.  was  written. 

^  *  He  took  pleasure  in  jokes  and  noisiness  .  .  .  delighted  to  share  in  the 
sports  of  other  boys  .  .  .  Sometimes,  when  the  rest  were  tired  out,  he, 
unwearied,  would  ask  in  the  joyous  tone  of  a  conqueror,  whether  any 
others  had  a  mind  to  contend  further  with  him.'  He  excelled  his  equals 
in  age,  and  even  some  of  his  seniors,  in  leaping,  running,  wrestling,  'seu 
quolibet  alio  membrorum  sinuamine.'  Yet  even  in  those  days,  a  little 
boy  of  about  three  once  burst  out  crying,  and,  calling  Cuthbert  'bishop,' 
told  him  that  he  ought  not  to  play  among  children.  Cuthbert,  as  '  bonae 
indolis  puer,'  was  struck  with  tliis  strange  warning,  and,  caressing  the 
child  affectionately,  went  home,  and  became  from  that  day  '  steadier, 
animoque  adolescentior.'  Bede,  V,  C.  i.  (Some  boys,  according  to  the 
Anon,  Vit,,  were  playing  at  'standing  on  their  heads,')  Both  'Lives' 
tell  of  his  lameness  and  its  cure.  On  the  prescription  for  it  by  a  stranger, 
see  above,  p,  73. 

3  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb,  4  ;  Sim.  Hist.  Dun.  Eccl.  i,  3,  and  Auct.  Hist,  do 
S.  Cuthb,  2,  It  was  August  31,  651,  He  thought  he  saw  angels  carrying 
a  holy  soul  into  heaven  '  as  in  a  globe  of  fire  '  ;  Anon.  Vit.  '  Next  morn- 
ing he  gave  over  the  sheep  to  their  owners '  ;  Sim.  Dun.  Eccl.  i.  3. 

*  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  6. 

^  lb. :  '  Non  autem  tantam  escarum  valebat  subire  continentiam.' 

®  lb.  7.  In  his  last  moments  he  enjoined  hospitality  to  strangers, 
ib.  39. 


2i6  Early  life  of  Wilfrid, 

CHAP.  VI.  and  other  Roman  usages  ^ :  and  Cuthbert  was  again  at 
Melrose,  'attending  to  the  precepts  and  the  example  of 
Boisil  2.' 

Wilfrid.  And  this  brings  us  to  the  name  of  him  who  concentrated 
and  intensified,  by  his  energy  and  influence,  the  preference 
for  '  Catholic '  over  '  Scotic '  usages, — to  the  splendid  name 
of  Wilfrid.  The  son  of  a  Northumbrian  thane,  and  bom  in 
634^, — '  the  year  of  the  kings'  apostasy,'  he  began  at  thirteen 
or  fourteen  *  *  to  think  of  forsaking  his  paternal  fields,  and 
to  seek  for  heavenly  gifts.'  In  spite  of  a  step-mother's 
unkindness,  he  was  well  equipped  with  all  that  could  enable 
him  to  make  a  good  appearance  at  the  court  of  Oswy  ^,  and 
his  father  bade  him  God-speed.  He  stood  in  the  presence 
of  Queen  Eanfled, — a  handsome  boy  of  quick  intellect  and 
graceful  bearing, — introduced  to  her  by  nobles  on  whom  he 
had  waited  at  his  father's  table;  and  besought  her  to 
promote  his  desire  of  '  serving  God,' — the  phrase  then  used, 
with  an  unhappy  restriction  of  meaning,  for  monastic  life  ^. 
One  of  the  king's  '  companions  '^,'  seized  with  paralysis,  was 
preparing  to  become  a  monk  at  Lindisfarne :  and  under  his 
care,  and  as  his  attendant,  Wilfrid  entered  that  monastery, 
where,  although  he  did  not  receive  the  Scotic  tonsure  ^,  he 

^  Bede,  iii.  25  ;  and  v.  19,  'optione  data  malueruut  loco  cedere.'  Vit. 
Cuthb.  8  :  '  Eata  cum  Cuthberto  .  .  .  domum  repulsus  est.'  But  the 
Anon.  Vit,  says  that  Cuthbert  received  the  Roman  tonsure  at  Ripon. 

^  Vit.  Cuthb.  8  ;  comp.  H.  E.  iv.  27,  '■  quod  ipsum  etiam  Boisil,'  &c. 

^  Florence,  a.  634  :  '  Sanctus  Wilfridus  nascitur.' 

*  Eddi,  Vit.  Wilfr.  2  :  '  In  his  fourteenth  year,  in  corde  suo  cogitabat,* 
&c.  So  Bede  says,  v.  19.  Fridegod  and  Eadmer  say  he  had  passed  his 
fourteenth  year.  Eddi,  or  Haedde,  ecclesiastically  called  Stephen,  was 
his  attendant  in  after  years.  Fridegod  (or  Frithegod)  wrote  a  metrical 
Life  of  him  in  the  middle  of  the  tenth  century  by  desire  of  archbishop 
Odo ;  Eadmer,  a  prose  Life  in  St.  Anselm's  time.  Of  course  neither  of 
these  'Lives'  has  any  independent  authority.  See  Act.  SS.  Bened. 
saec.  iii.  1. 169  ff.  Fridegod's  '  euphuism  '  of  style  is  portentous,  and  often 
unintelligible.  Eadmer  alludes  to  him,  and  mentions  Bede,  but  does  not 
mention  Eddi  ;  see  Historians  of  Ch.  of  York,  i.  163. 

^  See  Turner,  Angl.-Sax.  iii,  16. 

®  See  above,  p.  197,  and  comp.  Bede,  iv.  9,  24 ;  Hist.  Abb.  i,  15  ;  Ep.  to 
Egb.  7. 

'  A  gesith,  or  comes,  named  Cudda  ;  see  above,  p.  187.  Eddius  calls 
him  Wilfrid's  '  dominus.' 

*  '  Adhuc  laicus  capite,'  Edd.  2.     Above,  p.  92. 


Benedict  Biscop.  217 

acquired  all  that  he  could  learn  of  the  Scotic  discipline,  chap.  vi. 
learned  by  heart  the  Psalter  in  Jerome's  more  correct  or 
'  Gallican  recension  ^,'  and  was  '  loved  by  the  other  boys 
as  a  brother,  by  the  seniors,'  and  doubtless  by  Aidan,  '  as 
a  son  2.'  Some  three  years  afterwards,  having  a  strong 
desire  to  visit  Rome,  to  gain  the  blessing  of  the  '  successor 
of  St.  Peter,'  and  to  study  monastic  rules  of  a  better  type 
than  the  Scotic  ^  Wilfrid,  by  his  father's  advice,  and  with 
the  frank  assent  of  the  bishop  and  monks  of  Lindisfame  *, 
obtained  a  letter  of  commendation  from  Eanfled  to  her 
cousin  King  Erconbert,  who  was  just  the  man  to  appreciate 
the  brilliant  gifts,  the  intent  studiousness,  and  the  religious 
fervour  of  the  young  Northumbrian.  After  about  a  year's 
delay,  which  Wilfrid  employed  in  studying  the  Church 
usages  of  Canterbury,  Erconbert  found  a  suitable  fellow-  Benedict 
traveller  for  him  in  one  whose  name  is  as  closely  bound 
up  as  Wilfrid's  with  Northumbrian  Church  history,  and 
who  was  to  make  himself  a  name  as  an  ecclesiastical 
traveller^,  a  founder  of  monasteries,  and  a  promoter  of 
religious  art.  This  was  Biscop,  also  called,  as  a  patronymic, 
'  Baducing  ^,'   and   ecclesiastically   Benedict,   a   nobly-born 

^  *  Citissime,'  says  Bede.  '■  Secundum  Hiercnymi  emendationem,' 
Edd.  3,  This  translation  was  made  at  Bethlehem,  from  the  Septuagint 
version  according  to  the  '■  Hexaplar '  text,  in  389.  It  became  current  in 
Gaul  and  elsewhere  before  it  was  accepted  in  Italy.  The  '  Koman  Psalter  * 
was  Jerome's  earlier  and  cursory  revision  of  the  old  Italic  version,  made 
in  383.  It  was  uted  at  Canterbury  after  the  '  Gallic  Psalter'  was  received 
in  other  English  churches  ;  and  is  still  in  use  in  St.  Peter's  at  Rome. 
See  Waterland  on  Ath.  Creed,  c.  4  ;  Vallarsi,  Vit.  Hieron.  c.  20.  Jerome's 
version  from  the  Hebrew  was  never  in  public  use,  and  has  been  very 
unfortunately  neglected.  Wilfrid  afterwards,  at  Canterbury,  learned 
the  ^  Roman '  Psalter  by  heart.  ^  Edd.  2. 

^  Bede  says  nothing  of  his  desire  for  the  pope's  blessing.  Nor  are  we 
told  how,  at  Lindisfarne,  he  learned  to  think  that  there  were  better  rules 
abroad.  Bede  perhaps  thought  Wilfrid's  '  Romanizing '  somewhat  exces- 
sive, and  may  have  traced  to  it  later  troubles. 

*  Bede,  v.  19  :  '  Quod  cum  fratribus,'  &c.  This  speaks  well  for  Finan's 
generosity,  if  the  lad's  somewhat  premature  discontent  with  Lindisfarne 
customs  were  made  known  to  him  :  and  Wilfrid,  at  seventeen  or  eighteen, 
was  not  likely  to  be  too  modest  in  such  a  matter. 

^  He  made  six  visits  to  Rome, — five  of  them  being  directly  from  Britain, 
—in  653,  665,  667,  671,  678,  684.     See  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  i.  308. 

^  Edd.  3;  Fridegod,  96.  See  Moberly's  Bede,  p.  370.  For  Benedict 
Biscop,  see  Bede,  iv.  18,  v.  19  ;  Hist.  Abb.  i  (f^e  passage).    See  Alb.  Butler, 


2i8  Wilfrid  at  Lyons 

CHAP.  VI.  Northumbrian  of  twenty-five,  who  had  given  up  his  rank 
as  a  'king's  thane,'  and  the  goodly  estate  which  he  had 
received  from  Oswy,  in  order,  says  Bede,  '  to  take  service 
under  the  true  King/  The  two  companions  set  out  for 
Rome  towards  the  end  of  653,  soon  after  the  death  of  arch- 
bishop Honorius :  and  Eddi  gives  a  winning  picture  of  the 
youth  of  nineteen,  'pleasant  in  address  to  all,  sagacious 
in  mind,  strong  in  body,  swift  of  foot,  ready  for  every  good 
work,  with  a  face  that  in  its  unclouded  cheerfulness  be- 
tokened a  blessed  mind^/  Such  was  Wilfrid  when  he 
reached  Lyons,  and  was  introduced  to  *  Dalfinus,'  as  both 
our  writers  call  its  archbishop,  confusing  the  prelate  Aune- 
mund  with  his  brother  Dalfinus,  count  of  Lyons  ^.  Biscop, 
impatient  to  be  at  Rome,  left  Wilfrid  at  Lyons,  where  he 
spent  some  little  time  with  the  archbishop,  who  was 
'  charmed  with  his  beautiful  countenance,  his  prudence  in 
speech,  his  quickness  in  action,  his  steadiness  and  maturity 
of  thought^,'  loaded  him  with  presents,  and  offered,  if  he 
would  remain,  to  give  him  the  government  of  a  district 
and  the  hand  of  his  niece  ^,  and  to  treat  him  always  as 
an  adopted  son.  Wilfrid  appears  to  have  accepted  the 
adoption  ^,,  but  he  gratefully  declined  the  other  proposals, 
urging  the  purpose  for  which  he  had  left  his  native  land. 
The  prelate  could  not  but  acquiesce,  and  sent  him  on  to 
Rome  with  a  guide  and  all  necessaries,  only  entreating 

Jan.  i;2,  and  Bp.  Browne,  Lessons  from  Early  Engl.  Ch.  Hist.  p.  30  ff.  We 
find  '  Beda  *  and  '■  Biscop  *  ranking  sixth  and  seventh  from  Woden  in  the 
genealogy  of  the  kings  of  the  Lindisfori  ;  Mon.  H.  Brit.  p.  431.  Moberly 
suggests  that  Beda  i«  equivalent  to  Badoc  ;  Introd.  p.  xii. 

^  Edd.  3, 4  :  * .  .  .  tristia  ora  nunquam  contraxit.'  The  archbishop  saw 
*  in  facie  serena  quod  benedicta  mente  gerebat'  (al.  benedictam  mentem). 

*  See  Mabillon,  Ann.  Bened.  i.  425,  443  :  '  Nullus  in  vetustis  Lugdu- 
nensium  antistitum  indicibus  Dalfino  locus  est,*  and  cp.  Gallia  Christiana, 
iv.  43.  Aunemund  had  signed  a  royal  diploma  for  the  immunity  of  the 
abbey  of  St.  Denis  from  episcopal  control  in  653.  Under  the  Merovingians 
the  governors  of  cities  were  called  '  counts ' ;  e.  g.  at  Poitiers  (Greg.  Turon. 
H.  F.  iv.  42),  Tours  (ib.  v.  48),  and  Lyons    Greg.  Vit.  Patr.  8). 

^  Bede,  v.  19. 

*  That  is,  the  daughter  of  count  Dalfinus. 

^  Eddi  calls  the  archbishop  '  his  father,'  5 ;  so  Fridegod,  168.  The 
kings  Cadwalla  and  Osred  afterwards  became  Wilfrid's  adopted  sons  ; 
Eddi,  42,  59. 


and  at  Rome,  219 

that  he  would  ^  remember  to  travel  home  by  way  of  Lyons.'  chap.  vi. 
Wilfrid  reached  Rome  probably  in  the  spring  of  654,  and 
spent  several  months  in  daily  visits  to  the  sacred  places  ^, 
and  in  study  of  the  Gospels,  and  of  the  received  Paschal 
calculations,  and  of  other  Church  rules  wbich  he  could  not 
have  learned  in  Britain,  under  the  tuition  of  the  archdeacon 
Boniface  ^,  who,  before  his  departure,  presented  him  to  the 
newly-elected  Pope  Eugenius  I.  Wilfrid,  in  his  later 
career,  must  often  have  remembered  how  the  pontiff  '  laid 
his  hand  on  his  Jaead,  and  blessed  him  with  a  prayer^.' 
Returning,  with  a  store  of  relics,  to  Lyons,  he  stayed  three 
years  with  his  kind  host  the  archbishop,  studied  under 
learned  ecclesiastics,  and  received  the  crown-like  Roman 
tonsure*.  The  prelate's  wish  to  make  him  his  heir  was 
defeated  in  the  September  of  658  by  his  own  tragical 
death  ^,  which  Eddi,  and  Bede  simply  following  him  ^,  lay 
at  the  door  of  Queen  Bathildis,  properly  Baldechild,  the 

^  Eddi  says  that  he  entered  an  '  oratory  of  St.  Andrew,'  saw  a  manu- 
script of  the  Gospels  placed  on  the  top  of  an  altar,  and  invoked  the  apostle's 
intercession  in  order  to  obtain  for  the  task  of  preaching  the  Gospel 
'  legendi  ingenium  et  docendi  .  .  .  eloquentiam.'  There  was  such  an 
oratory  under  St.  Peter's  (Vit.  Pontif.  i.  156),  and  another  in  the  Via 
Labicana  was  rebuilt  by  Sergius  I  :  but  one  naturally  thinks  of  Wilfrid 
as  crossing  Rome  to  St.  Andrew's  on  the  Coelian,  '  a  most  sacred  place,' 
as  Raine  has  truly  said,  to  any  pilgrim  from  England  (Hist.  Gh.  York,  i.  8). 
So  Eadmer,  6  ;  and  Rich,  of  Hexham,  X  Script.  290,  says  that  he  prayed 
to  be  set  free  '  de  ingenii  sui  tarditate  et  linguae  suae  rusticitate.' 

^  Eddi  calls  him  the  first  of  the  pope's  counsellors,  and  says  that  he 
treated  Wilfrid  like  a  son.  For  the  discovery  of  a  leaden  '  bulla,'  with 
Boniface's  name  on  it,  at  Whitby,  see  Raine,  Historians  of  Ch.  of  York, 
1.8. 

^  Eddi,  5.  Eugenius,  a  weak  but  kindly  prelate,  was  elected  under 
imperial  pressure,  while  pope  St.  Martin  was  still  alive  in  exile,  Sept.  8, 
654  ;  in  the  following  summer  Martin  mentioned  him  as  *  pastorem  qui 
eis  nunc  praeesse  monstratur,'  a  sort  of  sanction  of  Eugenius'  pontificate 
(Ep.  17).     Eugenius  survived  Martin,  dying  in  June,  657. 

*  *  Crines,  summo  de  vertice  passes  .  .  .  recidit ; '  Frideg.  177. 

^  Mabillon,  in  Ann.  Bened.  i.  443,  quotes  a  statement  that  Count 
Dalfinus  was  executed  on  a  false  charge  of  treason  brought  against  him 
by  the  nobles,  and  Aunemund  was  afterwards  arrested  by  three  *  duces ' 
sent  from  the  palace,  who  refused  him  a  hearing  and  put  him  to  death. 
This  he  thinks  not  improbable.  The  '  breviarium  camerae  Lugdunensis.' 
as  quoted  in  Gall.  Christ.  1.  c,  ascribes  his  death  to  aristocratic  jealousy. 
Aunemund  was  honoured  by  his  church  on  Sept.  29. 

^  See  Raine,  Historians  of  Ch.  of  York,  1.  p.  xxxiii. 


220  Bathildis  and  Ebroin. 

CHAP.  vT.  widow  of  Chlodwig  or  Clovis  II,  the  '  do-nothing '  king  of 
Neustria  and  Burgundy \  Here  is  a  difficulty;  for  while 
Eddi  compares  her  to  Jezebel  '^j  the  Church  has  canonized 
her  for  recorded  acts  of  piety,  charity,  and  humility  ^ ;  and 
her  character  has  suggested  that  the  execution  of  the 
archbishop  on  a  charge  of  disaffection  may  have  been 
ordered  by  Ebroin,  at  the  beginning  of  his  career  as 
'  Mayor  of  the  Palace '  for  her  infant  son  Chlotair  III  *. 
Wilfrid  attended  his  benefactor  to  the  scene  of  death,  and 
even  stripped  off  his  cloak  in  order  to  suffer  with  him. 

*  Who  is  that  fair  youth  ? '  asked  the  royal  officers  charged 

^  He  came  to  the  throne  in  638  (L'Art  de  Verifier,  &c.,  v.  408), 
married  her  in  649,  and  died  in  656. 

^  *  Malevola  regina  .  .  .  sicut  .  .  .  Jezebel  ; '  Edd.  6.  He  adds  that  nine 
bishops  were  slaughtered.  So  Fridegod,  who  compares  her  to  an  infernal 
caldron,  186,  as  if  he  had  been  writing  of  Fredegond  ;  and  Eadmer  follows 
suit ;  '  fired  with  demoniacal  fury.'  Six  years  later,  Segebrand,  a  bishop 
of  Paris,  her  adviser,  was  put  to  death  by  the  nobles. 

^  See  the  Parisian  Breviary.  Jan.  30.     During  her  husband's  life,  she 

*  commended  to  him  the  poor  and  the  churches '  ;  while  regent,  she 
'  annulled  simoniacal  ordinations,*  forbade  the  selling  of  Christians  as 
slaves,  ransomed  many  at  her  own  cost,  restored  monastic  discipline; 
and,  after  she  retired  in  weariness  and  despondency  to  the  nunnery 
which  she  had  virtually  refounded  at  Chelles,  she  there  exhibited  great 
humility  and  tenderness.  See  Alb.  Butler,  Jan.  30  ;  Mabillon,  i.  438. 
It  is  interesting  to  remember  that  she  herself  came  to  Gaul  as  a  '  Saxon' 
slave-girl  from  Britain,  probably  from  Wessex.  She  was  said  to  be  nobly 
born.     She  died  in  680/    Cp.  Oman,  Europ.  Hist.  476-918,  p.  257. 

*  See  Mabillon,  Ann.  Bened.  i.  443.  He  traces  the  accusation  made  by 
Eddi  to  his  ignorance,  as  a^  foreigner'  who  was  not  then  a  companion  of 
Wilfrid,  and  he  infers  from  certain  documents  that  Ebroin  became  mayor 
of  the  palace  immediately  aftei-wards,  if  not  a  little  before.  Others  date 
his  accession  to  ofl&ce,  on  the  death  of  his  predecessor  Erchinoald  (for  whom 
see  Bede,  iii.  19),  as  late  as  659  (L'Art  de  Verifier,  v.  411)  ;  which  would 
overthrow  Mabillon's  theory.  But  the  Continuator  of  Fredegarius  makes 
the  deaths  of  the  king  and  Erchinoald  take  place  '  eodem  tempore  ;'  c.  92. 
Erchinoald  himself  was  incapable  of  any  cruelty  to  bishops  ;  Fredegar.  84. 
On  the  office  of  -major  palatii'  ('major  domus/  Bede,  iv.  i),  see  De 
Coulanges,  Monarchie  Franque,  p.  166 ff. ;  that  ' palace,' like  'house,' was 
used  for  the  king's  household  (as  at  Constantinople  the  office  was  called 
'  cura  palatii '),  and  that  '  les  rois  merovingiens  n'ont  dans  leurs  maires 
du  palais  que  ce  que  existait  avant  eux,  autour  d'eux,  partout,'  under 
varying  titles.  The  '  major  '  was  '  the  king's  first  servant,  '  charged  with 
the  overseeing  of  the  rest  of  the  household  officials'  (Oman,  p.  123%  So 
the  high  steward  of  the  Hebrew  kings  was  called  'the  governor'  or  'over- 
seer of  the  house'  (i  Kings  xviii.  3  ;  2  Kings  xix.  2;  2  Chron.  xxviii.  7: 
cp.  Isa.  xxii.  15  flf.). 


Wilfrid  at  Ripon,  .  221 

with  the  execution.  '  A  foreigner/  they  were  told,  '  from  chap.  m. 
the  Angles  in  Britain : '  whereupon  they  commanded  their 
men  to  spare  his  life.  Wilfrid  then  returned  to  Northum- 
bria,  apparently  at  the  end  of  658.  He  soon  became 
intimate  with  Alchfrid,  who  had  learned  from  his  friend 
Kenwalch  of  Wessex  to  love  and  follow  the  Roman 
Church-rules  ^.  He  treated  Wilfrid  with  profound  respect^ , 
and  asked  him,  'for  God's  sake  and  St.  Peter's/  to  stay 
with  him  in  Deira.  They  became,  we  are  told,  as  closely 
united  as  David  and  Jonathan :  and  Alchfrid  gave  Wilfrid  Found a- 
land  for  building  a  monastery  at  Stanford,  perhaps  Stam-  ^?^  ^^ 
ford  bridge  near  York,  and  not  long  afterwards  put  him  in 
possession  of  the  house  at  Eipon^,  lately  vacated  by  the 
monks  of  Melrose.  This  may  be  dated  in  the  same  year, 
661,  in  which  Colman  succeeded  Finan.  Thus  began 
Wilfrid's  connexion  with  a  place  which  for  so  many  years 
he  loved  better  than  any  other,  and  within  which  at  last 
he  found  a  grave. 

His  life  at  Ripon  was  happy.  His  charities  endeared  him 
to  the  poor,  whose  needs,  at  all  times,  moved  his  generous 
heart.  He  won  the  respect  and  affection  of  all  classes. 
Men  spoke  of  the  abbot  of  Ripon  as  humble  and  tranquil, 
occupied  in  devotion  and  in  almsgiving,  benignant,  sober, 
modest,  merciful.  His  discourses  were  '  clear  and  lucid  ^.' 
But  he  was  not  yet  a  presbyter.    He  received  priest's  orders  ^ 

^  Edd.  7.  Bede,  v.  19  :  '  At  ille  Brittaniam  veniens,'  &c.  Birinus  had 
brought  these  rules  into  Wessex. 

2  The  hero-worshipping  Eddi  says  that  he  prostrated  himself  before 
Wilfrid  and  asked  a  blessing  from  him, /or  he  seemed  to  him  to  speak 
like  an  angel  of  God  ;  7. 

3  Eddi,  8  ;  Bede,  v.  19.  *  Eddi,  9. 

'  Fridegod's  phrase,  '  ordinis  .  .  .  in  honore  secundi,'  241,  shows  that 
the  theory  which  made  the  presbyterate  the  highest  order  was  not  domi- 
nant in  the  English  Church  in  the  tenth  century,  although  it  appears  in 
^Ifric's  canons.  Theodore's  Penitential  (ii.  2)  recognizes  three  principal 
'  gradus,'  those  of  bishop,  priest,  and  deacon.  Bede  speaks  of  the  '  gradus 
episcopatus'  (iii.  5,  22)  or  the  '  summi  sacerdotii  gradus'  (iii.  23),  as  he 
does  of  the  '  sacerdotalis  gradus'  iiii.  5),  or  '  sacerdotii  gradus'  (iii.  27),  or 
*  presbyteratus  gradus'  (v.  12  :  cf.  24,  of  his  own  ordination),  or  'presby- 
terii  gradus  '  (H.  Abb.  16)  ;  and  somewhat  later,  archbishop  Egbert  makes 
the  episcopate  the  highest  of  the  seven  '  gradus,'  omitting  that  of  acolyths, 
Pontif.  p.  II.    On  this  subject  cp.  Bp.  Pearson,  Minor  Works,  i.  275. 


222 


Wilfrid's  Church-programme, 


Wilfrid. 


at  Alchfrids  request,  from  Agilbert  the  ex-bishop  of 
Dorchester,  who  was  then  visiting  Northumbria,  and  who 
scrupled  not  to  ordain  in  the  diocese  of  Lindisfame 
without  consulting  Colman,  because,  although  he  had 
long  studied  under  Irish  Church-teachers,  he  practically 
regarded  the  Scotic  hierarchy  as  contumacious,  or  even 
schismatical. 
Aims  of  This,  at  least,  was  Wilfrid's  view,  as  we  may  infer  from 
his  subsequent  conduct.  In  fact,  he  looked  down  on  the 
old  Northumbrian  Churehmanship,  and  on  that  North- 
umbrian episcopate  which  had  fostered  his  boyish  aspira- 
tions, and  given  him  the  best  training  that  it  could,  as  if 
the  latter  had  no  claim  on  his  reverence,  or  even  on  his 
forbearance,  and  as  if  the  former  needed  a  thoroughgoing 
renovation.  The  Scotic  error  on  the  Paschal  question  did 
but  represent,  and  did  not  exhaust,  the  defects  of  Scotic 
Christianity.  It  seemed  to  him  generally  a  poor,  coarse, 
unsightly  plant,  such  as  might  be  expected  to  grow  up  in 
a  corner,  apart  from  all  genial  and  expansive  influences.  It 
was  his  mission  to  educate  his  native  Church, — to  refine, 
enrich,  develop  it,  by  contact  with  the  culture  and  the 
stateliness  of  Canterbury,  of  Lyons, — above  all,  of  majestic 
Rome.  He  was  right  on  the  general  merits  of  that 
question  which  appears  to  have  occupied  so  inordinate 
a  share  of  his  thoughts;  and  right  also,  beyond  doubt, 
in  thinking  that  Scotic  ways  were  too  rude  and  too  narrow 
to  be  permanently  the  ways  for  an  English  Church,  with 
its  continental  associations  and  its  great  prospects  of  future 
self-extension.  He  had  a  real  work  to  do  for  his  country- 
men ;  but  in  his  way  of  rushing  into  it,  and  of  going  through 
with  it,  he  exhibited  the  two  faults  of  imperiousness  and 
egoism.  It  seems  as  if  his  stay  in  Rome  had  infected  him 
with  the  Roman  love  of  domination,  already  too  congenial 
to  its  bishops;  and  with  all  his  high  qualities  and  many 
virtues  was  blended  a  self-complacent  consciousness  not 
only  of  abilities  and  force  of  character,  but  of  exertions 
and  sacrifices  made  for  religion  or  the  Church. 

So  stood  matters   in   Northumbria   when   the  disputes 
between  the  Scotic  and  anti-Scotic  parties  came  inevitably 


Conference  of  Whitby.  223 

to  a  head,  in  the  early  weeks  of  664.  Colman  had  the  chap.  vi. 
advantage,  as  he  would  consider  it,  of  the  presence  of 
Bishop  Cedd,  then  on  a  visit  to  Lastingham :  and  Hilda, 
already  looked  up  to  as  a  wise  woman  who  could  give 
'  good  rede  '  to  princes  as  to  common  folk  ^  would  be  but 
the  most  prominent  of  several  heads  of  convents  who  were 
prepared  to  stand  by  the  customs  of  Lindisfarne.  King 
Oswy  inclined  to  the  same  side :  his  queen,  as  we  know, 
supported  the  other,  which  was  represented  by  Alchfrid, 
Romanus,  James  the  Deacon,  Bishop  Agilbert  and  his  priest 
Agatho,— above  all,  by  Abbot  Wilfrid.  Ronan,  the  vehe- 
ment Irish  opponent  of  Irish  traditions  in  Finan's  time, 
seems  to  have  been  absent ;  but  Colman  ^  must  have 
grieved  to  see  another  Irishman  of  higher  dignity  and  more 
impressive  character  included  in  the  same  ranks.  This  was 
Tuda,  who  had  been  consecrated  a  bishop  in  South  Ireland, 
and  '  according  to  the  custom '  which  now  obtained  in  those 
parts,  conformed  to  the  '  Catholic '  usages.  He  had  lately 
come  into  Northumbria,  and  had  been  helpful  in  setting 
forth  Christianity,  as  Bede  says  emphatically,  'both  by 
word  and  work  ^.'  To  end  the  strife,  a  regular  conference 
was  arranged, — Bede  calls  it  a  '  synod,'  but  it  was  a  gather- 
ing of  '  all  the  ranks  in  the  Church  system,'  as  Eddi  phrases 
it  ^.  The  place  chosen  was  Hilda's  new  monastery,  elevated  Confer- 
on  that  proud  sea-ward  height  which  is  now  crowned  by  wMtby. 
the  ruined  church  of  an  abbey  founded  two  centuries 
after  her  minster  had  been  laid  desolate.  The  time  was 
in  the  first  half  of  664;  most  likely  in  Lent,  for  the 
promoters  might  wish  to  secure  uniformity  of  observance 
in  regard  to  the  coming  Easter,  which,  by  Catholic  rules, 
fell  on  April  21.      Moreover,  some   time   is   required  for 

^  Bede,  iv.  23  :  *  Tantae  autem  erat  ipsa  prudentiae,'  &c. 

^  One  specimen  of  Eddi's  heedlessness  is  his  calling  Colman  '  metropolitan 
bishop  of  the  city  of  York  ; '  Vit.  Wilf.  10. 

^  Bede,  iii.  26  :  '  Venerat  autem,'  &c.     See  above,  p.  56. 

*  Eddi,  10.  See  the  '  Synodus  Pharensis'  in  Mansi,  xi.  67.  Kemble 
treats  it  as  a  witenagemot,  ii.  243.  It  was  one  of  those  concilia  mixta  in 
which  laymen  were  as  truly  'constituent  members'  as  bishops  or  other 
ecclesiastics,  see  Hefele,  Councils,  E.  Tr.  1.  5,  25.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i. 
265.     Cp.  Bede,  iv.  28,  v.  19,  for  other  cases  j  and  Wilkins,  i.  173,  285. 


Question. 


224  The  Paschal  Question, 

CHAP.  vL  events  which   happened  between  the  conference  and  the 
autumn. 

King  Oswy  opened  the  proceedings  by  urging  the  benefits 
of  uniformity  of  custom  among  those  who  were  united  in 
faith,  and  stating  tersely  the  question  for  discussion :  Of 
the  two  different  traditions,  which  was  the  truer?  He 
called  on  Colman  to  describe  his  usage  and  its  origin. 
Paschal  Before  Colman  answers,  let  us  remember  that  the  Paschal 

question,  as  it  then  stood,  was  twofold,  (i)  How  many 
years  must  elapse  before  the  Paschal  full  moon,  and  Easter 
Day  as  the  Sunday  after  it,  will  recur  on  the  same  day  ? 
How  can  we  settle  for  any  given  year  the  day  on  which 
that  moon  should  fall,  and  therefore  the  right  day  of 
Easter  ^  ?  This  question  was  answered  by  the  adoption  of 
'  cycles ' :  and  the  Scotic  and  British  Churches  retained  an 
old  cycle  of  eighty-four  years  which  Rome  had  used,  but 
which  she  had  cast  off  2,  adopting,  finally,  that  of  Dionysius 
Exiguus  ^,  according  to  which  the  lunar  cycle  for  nineteen 
years*,  multiplied  by  the  solar  cycle  for  twenty-eight 
years  ^,  showed  on  what  day  in  each  year,  during  succes- 
sive periods  of  five  hundred  and  thirty-two  years,  the 
Paschal  full  moon  would  fall,  and  therefore  what  day 
would  be  Easter  Sunday.  (2)  On  what  day  of  the  Paschal 
month,  or  as  it  was  expressed,  '  on  which  moon,'  being  a 
Sunday  (for  on  that  point  all  were  agreed),  may  Easter  be 
kept  ?     That  is,  if  the  Sunday  after  the  full  moon  should 

^  See  Hefele,  i.  p.  326 ;  Plummer's  Bede,  ii.  350. 

2  Prideaux,  ii.  255,  256 ;  Diet.  Chr.  Ant.  i.  592,  594  ;  above,  p.  89. 

^  See  Bede,  v.  21. 

*  In  the  nineteen  years'  cycle,  the  number  of  any  given  year  was  called 
the  '  golden  number,'  because  marked  with  letters  of  gold  in  ancient 
calendars.  At  the  end  of  the  nineteen  years  '  the  various  aspects  of  the 
moon  are  within  an  hour  the  same  as  they  were  on  the  same  days  of  the 
month  nineteen  years  before  ; '  Nicolas,  Chron.  of  Hist.  p.  24. 

^  At  the  expiration  of  the  twenty-eight  years  *  the  days  of  the  months 
return  again  to  the  same  days  of  the  week  .  .  .  and  the  same  order  of  leap- 
years  and  of  Dominical  letters  returns'  (i.e.  there  being  seven  letters, 
A-G,  used  to  mark  the  seven  days  of  the  week,  and  January  i  being 
reckoned  as  A,— if  the  year  begins  on  Sunday,  then  A  is  the  Sunday 
letter, — if  on  Monday,  G,  &c.).  '  The  cycles  of  the  sun  and  moon,  multi- 
plied together,  form  a  thii-d,  which  is  called  the  Paschal  cycle ; '  Nicolas, 
I.e. 


Plea  for  the  Celtic  Easter.  2,2.^ 

be  '  the  fourteenth  moon/  may  that  be  Easter  Sunday,  or  chap,  v 
must  Easter  in  that  case  be  on  the  Sunday  following,  the 
twenty-first,  so  that '  the  fifteenth  moon '  must  be  treated  as 
the  first  possible  day  for  Easter  %  Here,  as  we  have  seen, 
lay  the  point  which  called  out  the  strongest  feeling.  The 
Celtic  Churches  included  '  the  fourteenth  moon '  within  the 
number  of  possible  Easter  Sundays :  the  other  Churches 
insisted  on  excluding  it,  urging  the  authority  of  the  Nicene 
Council  on  the  duty  of  keeping  clear  of  the  Jewish  day  ^. 
In  other  words,  Easter  Sunday  among  the  Scots  might  fall 
on  any  '  moon '  from  the  fourteenth  to  the  twentieth  inclu- 
sive :  at  Rome,  or  in  Gallic  Churches,  or  at  Canterbury  or 
Dunwich,  it  might  fall  on  any  moon  from  the  fifteenth  to 
the  twenty-first  but  not  earlier ;  and  to  keep  this  rule  was 
to  observe  the  '  Catholic  Easter.' 

Now  let  us  hear  Colman,  to  whom  Eddi  gives  credit  for 
intrepidity.  '  My  usage  is  that  which  I  learned  from  the 
elders  who  sent  me  hither,  and  which,  we  read  2,  is  traced 
up  to  St.  John.  I  dare  not  change  it,  and  I  have  no  mind 
to  change  it.  We  hold  it  as  an  inspired  tradition  that  the 
day  of  the  fourteenth  moon,  if  a  Sunday,  is  to  be  kept  as 
Easter  Day.  Let  the  other  side  state  their  opinion.'  Cedd 
translated  his  speech  into  '  Anglian ' ;  and  Oswy  then  called 
on  Agilbert,  who  desired  that  his  '  disciple '  Wilfrid  might 
state  their  case  on  his  behalf.  '  He  can  better  explain  in 
the  Anglian  tongue  what  we  hold  than  I  can  by  an  inter- 
preter,' meaning  by  Cedd,  who  acted  'as  a  very  careful 
interpreter  for  both  parties  ^! 

Thereupon  Oswy  ordered  Wilfrid  to  speak ;  and  the 
young  abbot  desired  nothing  better.  He  rose,  confident 
in  his  cause,  and  in  his  power  to  do  it  justice.  He  began  by 
dilating  on  the  wide   prevalence  of  the  Catholic  Easter, 

^  Oonstantine's  letter  after  the  Council  shows  that  the  Council  had 
decided  that  Easter  should  never  he  kept  at  the  time  at  which  the  Jews 
were  keeping  their  Passover.  On  this  principle,  if  the  fourteenth  should 
fall  on  a  Sunday,  Easter  would  not  be  celebrated  on  that  Sunday,  but 
a  week  later  ;  Hefele,  Councils,  E.  Tr.  i.  325  ;  above,  p.  88. 

^  *  Legitur,'  Bede.  Fridegod  (whose  metrical  version  of  the  conference  is 
incredibly  abject  in  point  of  taste)  makes  Colman  claim  Polycarp,  256, 

^  '  Interpres  in  eo  concilio  vigilantissimus  ; '  Bede,  iii.  25. 

Q 


226  Reply  of  Wilfrid 

CHAP.  VI.  which  he  had  found  in  Gaul,  in  Italy,  and  at  Rome,  where 
Peter  and  Paul  had  taught  and  suffered ;  and  which  he  had 
ascertained  to  be  observed  in  Africa,  Asia,  Egypt,  Greece, — 
in  fact  throughout  Christendom  ^,  '  save  only ' — and  here 
flashed  out  his  scornful  intolerance  for  what,  to  him,  was 
mere  local  perversity — '  save  only  among  these  persons ' — 
pointing  to  the  bishop  of  Lindisfarne  and  his  clergy — '  and 
their  partners  in  obstinacy,  the  Picts  and  Britons;  who, 
belonging  to  some  parts  only  of  two  remote  islands  ^,  are 
making  these  foolish  efforts  to  fight  against  the  whole 
world.' 

If  Bede  gives  the  sense  of  Wilfrid's  speech,  his  last  words 
had  been  rather  insulting  than  conciliatory  :  and  Colman  is 
represented  as  answering  with  quiet  dignity,  though  with 
very  inaccurate  knowledge,  '  I  wonder  that  you  should  call 
us  foolish  for  following  the  rule  of  the  Apostle  who  reclined 
on  the  Lord's  breast  ^.' 

Wilfrid's  answer  was  a  combination  of  good  sense,  unhis- 
toric  assumptions,  and  a  decisive  home- thrust.  '  Granting 
for  a  moment,'  he  said  in  effect,  'that  your  custom  does 
come  from  St.  John ;  it  was  far  from  being  folly  on  his 
part  to  adhere  to  Mosaic  observances,  while  St.  Paul  him- 
self found  it  necessary  to  avoid  giving  scandal  to  Jewish 
Christians^.  Thus  it  was  that  John  began  his  Paschal 
celebration  on  the  evening  of  the  fourteenth  of  Nisan, 
whether  that  was  a  Saturday  evening  or  no.  Peter, 
however,  acted  differently.     Taking  the  Lord's  Day  as  his 

*  Cummian  similarly  argues,  How  can  we  say,  '  Roma  errat,  Hieroso- 
lyma  errat,  Alexandria  errat,  Antiochia  errat  *  (he  refers  to  these  again  as 
'  Apostolic  Sees,'  and  ignores  Constantinople),  'totus  mimdus  errat, — soli 
tantum  Scoti  et  Britones  rectum  sapiunt  ?  '     Usher,  Sylloge,  p.  21. 

^  *  Britonum  Scotonunque  particula,  qui  sunt  paene  extremi,'  &c.  ; 
Cummian,  1.  c.     See  below. 

^  Comp.  the  Pseudo-Anatolius,  Can.  Pasch.  10  (Galland.  iii.  548^  :  'The 
bishops  of  Asia  received  their  rule  from  a  teacher  not  to  be  gainsaid, 
John  .  . .  who  lay  on  the  Lord's  breast.' 

*  Bede  makes  Wilfrid  cite  St.  Paul's  conduct  in  circumcising  Timothy, 
sacrificing  in  the  Temple,  and  shaving  his  head  at  Corinth.  (On  this 
last  point,  Wilfrid  departs  from  the  Vulgate  of  Acts  xviii.  18.)  The 
parenthesis,  'quomodo,'  &c.,  means  that  concession  on  such  points, 
in  view  of  the  circumstances  of  the  time,  was  a  very  different  thing  from 
any  compliance  with  heathen  idolatry. 


for  the  Catholic  Easter,  227 

fixed  point,  on  account  of  the  Resurrection,  he  agreed  with  chap.  vi. 
John  in  not  celebrating  the  Lord's  Pasch  before  the  rising 
of  the  fourteenth  moon  at  evening,  and  if  that  were  on 
a  Saturday,  would  then  begin  his  Easter,  as  we  do  now  ^ : 
but  if  the  Lord's  Day  were  to  fall  not  on  the  morrow  of  the 
fourteenth  moon,  but  on  the  sixteenth  or  seventeenth,  or 
any  other  day  up  to  the  twenty-first,  he  waited  for  that 
day^.'  Wilfrid  spoke,  evidently  with  the  Roman  arch- 
deacon's lessons  full  in  his  mind,  and  with  a  confidence  as 
to  St.  Peter's  Paschal  practice  which  showed  that  he  could  be 
as  credulous  on  one  side  as  his  opponents  on  the  other ; — 
but  he  was  on  stronger  ground  when  he  pointed  out  that 
the  Scotic  practice  could  not  claim  the  beloved  Apostle's 
authority.  It  differed  from  Johannean  or  Quartodeciman 
usage,  because  it  restricted  the  Paschal  festival  to  the 
Lord's  Day  ^.  It  differed  not  only  from  general  usage, 
but  even,  in  principle,  from  the  Mosaic  rules,  because 
it  allowed  the  thirteenth  moon  to  be  Easter  Eve,  and  the 
morning  of  the  fourteenth  to  be  Easter  Sunday  morning : 
whereas  Easter  Eve  ought  not  to  be  earlier  than  the 
fourteenth  evening,  nor  therefore  Easter  morning  than  the 
morning  of  the  fifteenth.  The  Scots,  he  urged,  began  their 
reckoning  too  early,  and  ended  it  a  day  too  early :  they  let 
in,  at  the  outset,  the  '  thirteenth  moon ' ;  they  left  out,  at 
the  close,  the  twenty-first  *.     They  agreed, — said  Wilfrid, 

*  Meaning  that  such  a  Saturday  evening  would  correspond  to  that  of 
Holy  Saturday,  as  observed  by  the  Church's  commencement  of  Easter 
rites  towards  the  close  of  that  day. 

2  Wilfrid  argues  that  this  is  really  in  accordance  with  Exod.  xii.  i8. 

'  As  Bede  says  of  Aidan,  the  Scots  and  Britons  had  neither  the  right 
to  claim  St.  John,  nor  the  discredit  of  adhering  to  '  Quartodecimanism.' 
St.  John  took  no  account  of  the  first  day  of  the  week  ;  but  the  Celtic 
Churches  would  not  celebrate  Pasch  on  any  other  day.  But  Wilfrid, 
though  '  crammed '  with  Eoman  assumptions  as  to  what  St.  Peter  did, 
imagined  that  '  .John's  successors  in  Asia  '  were  not  Quartodecimans. 

*  '■  Ita  ut  tertia  decima  luna  ad  vesperam  saepius  Pascha  incipiatis, 
cujus  neque  lex  ullam  fecit  mentionem,  neque  auctor  et  dator  Evangelii 
Dominus  in  ea,  sed  in  quarta  decima  x>el  vetus  pascha  manducavit  ad 
vesperam,  vel  Novi  Testamenti  sacramenta  .  .  .  tradidit.'  Here  vel  =  et. 
Wilfrid,  we  see,  adopts,  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  then  cuiTent  opinion, 
not  held  by  the  earliest  fathers,  that  the  actual  day  of  our  Lord's  death 
was  the  fifteenth    of   Nisan.     He  goes  on,   <  Item    lunam   vicesimam 


228  Reply  of  Wilfrid 

CHAP.  VI.  in  a  pithy  summary  of  his  case, — neither  with  John  nor 
Peter,  neither  with  Law  nor  Gospel.  Colman  replied  by 
appealing  to  'Anatolius'  Paschal  canon  ^,'  in  which  it  was 
ruled  that  the  Paschal  limits  should  be  '  the  fourteenth  and 
twentieth  moons  ' :  so  that  a  '  fourteenth  moon,'  if  a  Sunday, 
might  be  Easter  Sunday,  and  a  *  twenty -first  moon  '  might 
not.  He  also  asked  whether  it  were  credible  that  Columba 
and  his  successors,  men  eminent  for  sanctity  and  for  mira- 
cles, had  been  allowed  to  go  wrong  in  such  a  matter.  To 
this  Wilfrid  replied,  ^Anatolius  was  indeed  a  holy  and 
learned  man;  but  why  quote  him,  if  you  do  not  really 
follow  him  1  He  framed  the  cycle  of  nineteen  years  :  the 
whole  Church  keeps  to  it,  except  you  !  And  as  to  the 
fourteenth  and  twentieth  moons,  you  do  not  observe  that 
he  used  the  Egyptian  reckoning,  and  treated  the  fourteenth 
moon  at  evening  as  really  the  fifteenth  just  begun  ^ :  and  if 

primam,  quam  lex  maxime   celebrandam   commendavit,  a  celebratione 
vestri  paschae  funditus  eliminatis,'  &c.     Cp.  v.  21. 

*  See  the  canon,  erroneously  said  to  be  a  Latin  version  of  that  of 
Anatolius,  in  Galland.  Bibl.  iii.  545  ff.  Cp.  Diet.  Chr.  Ant.  i.  593.  It  con- 
tains, says  Bucherius,  several  '  paradoxes '  or  errors,  e.  g.  '  Paschae 
Dominican!  luna  xiv.  nullo  scrupulo  indicit,  in  quo  cum  Quartadecimanis 
.  .  .  facit,  etsi  id  illi  perpetuum  non  sit : '  in  its  nineteen  years,  Easter 
falls  thrice  on  the  *  fourteenth  moon,'  on  April  i,  March  29,  April  4. 
*  Praeterea,  eamdem  paschatis  Dominicam  a  xiii.  luna  saltem  exeunte  in 
XX.  duniaxat  diffundit  :  tametsi  Scriptura  et  cum  ea  Alexandrini  ...  in 
xxi.  aperte  propagent,'&c. ;  ib.  551.  As  to  the  necessity  of  keeping  Easter 
always  on  a  Sunday,  this  canon  is  emphatic  ;  '  Better  to  put  off  Easter, 
on  account  of  the  Lord's  Day,  until  the  twentieth  moon,  than  to  keep  it 
before  the  Lord's  Day  on  account  of  the  fourteenth  ; '  c.  11.  It  distinctly 
denies  that  Easter  can  be  kept  so  late  as  the  'twenty-first  moon,'  c.  8, 
i.  e.  later  than  a  day  of  which  the  evening  only  is  assigned  to  the  twenty- 
first.  Petavius  (Animadv.  in  Epiphan.  p.  193)  censures  Ruflfinus  for 
so  abbreviating  a  sentence  of  Anatolius'  Greek  (preserved  by  Euseb.) 
as  to  make  him  allow  Easter  to  be  kept  in  the  '  beginning  of  the  first 
month,*  i.  e.  on  the  fourteenth  moon  ;  and  traces  the  Celtic  error  to  this 
mistranslation. 

^  '  Ille  sic  in  Pascha  Dominico,'  &c.  Wilfrid  means,  *  In  principle  Ana- 
tolius was  with  us  ;  an  evening  which  you  would  reckon  as  the  fourteenth 
he  would  include  in  the  first  hours  of  the  fifteenth,  and  so  on.'  In  the 
'  Anatolian  '  canon,  c.  8,  we  find,  *  Omnis  dies  in  lunae  computatione,  non 
eodem  numero  quo  mane  initiatur,  ad  vesperam  finitur :  quia  dies  quae 
mane  in  luna  .  .  .  xiii.  annumeratur,  eadem  ad  vesperum  xiv.  invenitur.' 
Petavius  says  that  Wilfrid  ascribes  to  Anatolius  'opinionem  quam  ne 
somniavit  quidem  unquam,'  as  if  Anatolius  would  have  called  that  day 


for  the  Catholic  Easter.  229 

he  assigned  the  twentieth  as  an  Easter  Sunday,  he  did  so  chap.  vi. 
as  considering  that  its  evening  began  the  twenty-first. 
You  do  not  apprehend  this  peculiarity  of  reckoning :  that 
is  the  reason  why  you  sometimes  keep  your  Easter  even  on 
the  thirteenth  moon,  before  the  full  moon.  As  for  Columba 
and  his  successors,  and  the  signs  which,  according  to  you, 
attested  their  holiness — I  will  not  quote  the  text,  "  Many 
shall  say  to  Me  in  that  day,"  &c.,  for  I  doubt  not  that  they 
were  beloved  by  Him  whom  they  served  with  pious  inten- 
tion, although  with  rustic  simplicity.  If  they  kept  Easter 
wrongly,  it  was  because  they  knew  no  better;  therefore 
they  took  little  harm  by  it  ^  If  a  "  Catholic  reckoner  "  had 
shown  them  the  right  way,  I  feel  sure  that  they  would  have 
taken  it ;  for  in  other  matters  they  lived  up  to  their  know- 
ledge. But  you  have  not  the  excuse  of  ignorance  in  your 
resistance  to  the  decrees  made,  under  Scriptural  warrant  ^, 
by  the  Apostolic  see, — I  might  say  by  the  Universal  Church, 
whose  authority  must  needs  outweigh  that  of  a  few  men, 
however  holy,  in  a  corner  of  a  remote  island^.  If  your 
Columba — let  me  say  ours  too,  if  he  was  Christ's — was 
a  saint  and  a  wonder-worker,  ought  he  to  be  preferred 
to  the  blessed  chief  of  Apostles  % ' — and  here,  with  what 
a  look  and  in  what  a  tone  we  can  well  imagine,  Wilfrid 
thundered  out  the  text,  '  Thou  art  Peter/  and  left  its  echoes 
undisturbed  by  further  speech. 

only  '  the  fourteenth  '  which  had  a  full  moon  before  its  sunset, — otherwise 
he  would  call  it  the  thirteenth  ;  whereas  the  Irish  called  that  the  four- 
teenth and  kept  it  as  Paschal,  which  was  followed  by  a  full  moon  in  the 
ensuing  night.  '  The  spurious  canon  of  Anatolius,  given  in  Bucherius, 
was  perhaps  designed  to  support  the  cause  of  the  British  Christians  ; ' 
Diet.  Chr.  Ant.  1.  c. 

^  '  Our  elders,'  says  Cummian,  '  simply  and  faithfully  observed  quod 
optimum  in  diebus  suis  esse  noverunt  ; '  Usher,  Sylloge,  p.  19. 

2  '  Wilfrid  here  assumes  grounds  which  he  had  no  claim  to.  .  .  Wilfrid 
maintains  that  the  fifteenth  was  the  first  regular  day  for  the  solemnity  of 
Easter,  and  insists  upon  it  as  if  it  were  a  rule  of  faith  .  .  .  Yet  the  fact  is 
that,  were  Easter  day  to  be  fixed  according  to  the  Gospel  history,  the  six- 
teenth should  have  been  waited  for  ;'  Lanigan,  iii.  66. 

^  '  Uno  de  angulo  extremae  insulae  ; '  so  v.  19,  '  extremo  mundi  angulo  ;' 
a  play  on  the  name  Angles.  Cp.  Jerome,  Ep.  46. 10,  quoting  Virg.  Eel.  i.  67. 
The  ancient  insularity  of  the  inhabitants  of  Britain  had  been  intensified 
by  the  Teutonic  conquest :  see  Freeman,  Hist.  Essays,  iv.  234. 


230  Decision  of  King  Oswy 

CHAP.  VI.  His  argument  had  been,  on  the  whole,  well  adapted  to 
the  audience.  True,  he  had  treated  the  bishop  of  the 
Northumbrian  Church  with  a  dictatorial  roughness  which 
must  have  been  highly  offensive,  especially  to  those  Lindis- 
farne  ecclesiastics  who  remembered  him  as  a  precocious 
boy,  and  might  think  that,  as  such,  he  had  been  but  too 
kindly  treated.  True  also,  he  had  spoken  of  the  glorious 
saint  of  Hy  with  a  superb  indulgence  which  could  hardly 
be  less  irritating  ^.  True,  again,  that  he  had,  in  good  faith, 
disparaged  the  ancient  extent  of  Quartodeciman  observance, 
had  said  far  more  than  could  be  verified  as  to  St.  Peter's 
own  practice,  and  had  spoken  as  if  Rome's  existing  Paschal 
system  had  been  her  tradition  from  the  first, — which  '  was 
a  great  mistake  2/  for  she  had  altered  her  cycle,  and  had 
also  altered  her  Paschal  limits,  which  once  began  with  the 
'  sixteenth '  of  the  moon  ^  But  there  was  no  one  present 
who  could  expose  the  weak  points  of  his  pleading :  it  had 
one  strong  point, — the  utter  inability  of  the  Scotic  Church 
to  prove  itself  heir  to  the  Ephesine  tradition  ^ :  and  the 
appeal  to  the  majesty  of  the  'first'  Apostle  was  more 
impressive  to  King  Oswy  than  any  array  of  proofs  and 
authorities.  He  asked  Colman  whether  those  words  were 
really  spoken  by  Christ  to  St.  Peter  ?  '  Certainly.'  '  Did 
He  ever  give  the  like  power  to  your  Columba  % '  '  Never.' 
'You  both  agree,  then,  that  this  was  said  principally  to 
Peter,  and  that  to  him  our  Lord  gave  the  keys  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  %  '  '  Yes  ^,'  they  both  said,  '  assuredly.' 
Then  said  the  king,  with  a  quiet  smile  ^,  but  with  an  under- 
lying seriousness  which  we  might  smile  at,  if  the  perver- 
sion  of  faith   which    it   indicated    were    less   deplorable, 

^  *  Throughout  his  life  he  was  far  too  careless  of  the  opinions  and 
feelings  of  others.*     Raine,  Historians  of  Ch.  of  York,  i.  p.  xxviii. 

*  Lanigan,  iii.  64. 

3  lb.  ii.  375,  384,  390. 

*  lb.  ii.  386  :  *  On  this  point  Wilfrid  had  greatly  the  advantage  of 
Colman.' 

^  '  Etiam  :  *  so  v.  2,  6. 

^  Eddi,  10.  Oswy's  question  to  Colman  must  be  understood  to  mean, 
'  Do  you  admit  that  Wilfrid  has  quoted  correctly  ?  '  Fridegod  anticipates 
the  '  Renaissance '  affectations  by  making  Oswy  talk  of  '  the  pains  of 
Acheron,'  and  asks  '  Numquid  Olympiaca  Petro  quis  major  in  aula  ?' 


for  Continental  Easter,  231 

'  And  I  say  to  you  both,  that  this  is  that  door-keeper  chap.  vi. 
whom  I  do  not  choose  to  gainsay;  but  as  far  as  I  know 
and  am  able,  I  desire  in  all  things  to  obey  his  rulings, 
lest  haply  when  I  come  to  the  doors  of  the  kingdom, 
I  may  find  none  to  unbar  them,  if  }te  is  adverse  to  me 
who  is  proved  to  hold  the  keys.' 

Such  was  the   close  of   the  Whitby  conference.     Bede  Close  of 
intimates   that  '  there  was   also   no   small   debate   on  the  ^„!f^"  ^^' 

ence. 

question  of  the  tonsure  ^ ; '  but  he  has  spared  us  its  details. 
Enough  that  on  the  points  of  difference  between  the  Scotic 
and  non-Scotic  systems,  the  king  and  the  majority  of  the 
assembly  pronounced  against  the  former.  Cedd  himself, 
who  had  listened  to  both  sides  with  so  much  attention, 
abandoned  the  usages  of  Lindisfarne.  To  Colman  the  Colman's 
mortification  must  needs  have  been  intense.  He  himself  ^^^^  "^^' 
had  no  thought  of  adopting  the  foreign  customs :  he  would 
be  true  to  Hy  and  to  North  Ireland.  His  Irish  monks 
stood  by  him,  and  so  did  some  thirty  Northumbrians  who 
had  become  members  of  the  same  community  ^.  The  bishop 
announced  his  intention  of  going  to  consult  with  his  own 
people  in  Ireland  as  to  his  future  course.  This  would  be 
well  understood  to  be  an  abdication.  But  he  made  a 
parting  request  to  Oswy  ^,  which  touchingly  indicates  the 
generosity  and  tenderness  of  his  nature.  There  were  some 
brethren  in  his  monastery  who  had  no  mind  to  leave  their 
homes  for  his  sake,  or  for  the  sake  of  old  customs.  Be  it 
so, — let  them  remain  ;  but  would  the  king  set  over  them,  as 
abbot,  a  Lindisfarne  man  who  had  been  among  bishop 
Aidan's  first  pupils,  and  was  now  abbot  of  Melrose, — Eata  ? 
He  would  be  to  the  remnant  of  the  Lindisfarne  monks 
a  gentle  and  congenial  superior.  Oswy  readily  granted 
this  request :  and  Eata  became  abbot  of  Lindisfarne,  with- 
out resigning  the  charge  of  Melrose  *.  Colman  quitted  the 
Holy  Island  with  his  little  company,  and  took  with  him 

^  Bede,  iii.  26  :  'Nam  et  de  hoc  quaestio  non  minima  erat.' 
^  Bede,  iv.  4.     The  '  Petrine '  argument  did  not  overawe  them. 
^  Bede,  iii.  26 :  *  Quod  aiunt  Colmanum  abiturum  petiisse,'  &c. 
*  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.   16.     Richard  of  Hexham,  de  statu  Hagust.  Eccl. 
c.  9.     This  '  pluralism  '  was  irregular. 


232  Gains  and  losses 

CHAP.  VI.  some  of  the  bones  of  Aidan,  ordering  the  rest  to  be  buried 
in  the  sacristy  ^.  He  paid  a  visit  to  Hy,  where  the  tale  he 
had  to  tell  must  have  been  sorely  trying  to  the  then  abbot, 
Cumine  the  White  ^ :  and  thence  he  went  to  the  island  of 
Inisboffin  -,  off  the  coast  of  Mayo,  where  he  built  a  monas- 
tery. But  after  a  while,  as  Bede  tells  us  with  a  touch  of 
satirical  humour,  '  the  brethren  could  not  agree,  inasmuch 
as  the  Irishmen  used  to  leave  the  monastery  when  harvest- 
work  had  to  be  done,  and  roam  about  in  places  well  known 
to  them,  but  would  return  with  the  winter,  and  propose  to 
share  with  the  Englishmen  what  the  latter  had  gathered 
in^.'  So  Colman  removed  his  Northumbrian  monks  to 
a  small  property  which  he  purchased  in  Mayo  itself :  and 
the  house  thus  founded  was  in  Bede's  time  a  large  monastery, 
exclusively  occupied  by  Englishmen,  who  lived  under 
'canonical  rules,'  and  observed  those  very  usages  against 
which  their  founder  had  vainly  striven  in  664.  Colman 
himself  spent  the  rest  of  his  life  on  his  distant  isle,  and 
died  in  676  ^ 
Review  of  His  departure  from  Northumbria  marks  an  epoch,  which 
Mil&ion.^  we  may  pause  to  take  note  of  in  its  manifold  significance. 
It  was  the  end  of  the  Scotic  ascendency,  the  triumph  of  the 
*  Catholic  Easter '  and  of  other  Continental  Church  usages, 
the  opening  of  a  freer  communication  with  Latin  Chris- 
tianity properly  so  called.  It  brought  new  facilities  and 
opportunities,  made  room  for  new  precedents,  held  up  new 
models  of  excellence.  There  was  good  in  this,  and  also 
some  evil.  A  Church  moulded  on  the  Celtic  type  could 
never  have  sufiiced  for  the  needs  of  England.  The  Irish 
Church  was  too  intensely  monastic,  too  closely  bound  up 
with  the  tribal  divisions  of  its  people,  and  too  widely 
separated  from  the  general  area  of  ecclesiastical  civiliza- 

^  Bede,  iii.  26,  '  in  yecietario '  ;  cf.  above,  p.  i8a. 

2  He  sat  from  657  to  669 ;  Lanigan,  iii.  36.     See  Adamn.  iii.  5. 

^  •  Inisboufinde,  id  est,  insula  vitulae  albae  ; '  Bede,  iv.  4.  Cf.  Tigher- 
nach  :  '  Navigatio  Colmani  episcopi,  cum  reliquis  Scotorum,  ad  insulam 
Vaccae  Albae,  in  qua  fundavit  ecclesiam.'     See  Lanigan,  iii.  79. 

*  Bede,  iv.  4.     The  '  nota  sibi  loca  *  would  be  in  Connaught. 

^  Tighernach  :    '  Colman n us  '    (Columbanus,   Ulster  Ann.)    '  episcopus 


in  the  Latin  triumph.  233 

tion  ^.  The  Latinizing  process  gave  system  and  order,  and  chap.  vt. 
organized  and  concentrated  force,  and  a  certain  magnifi- 
cence which  could  symbolize  devotion,  and  teach  great 
lessons  through  the  imagination,  and  overawe  rough 
natures  as  by  the  visible  presence  of  a  Kingdom  supreme 
over  lord  and  ceorl  alike.  In  its  train  came  all  that  in  that 
age  could  educate,  or  soften,  or  form  taste,  or  train  the 
sense  of  beauty :  it  founded  schools  as  well  as  convents, 
enlisted  painting  and  architecture,  though  still  of  a  rude 
and  stern  type,  in  the  service  of  religion,  and  in  various 
ways  acted  as  an  elevating  and  civilizing  power.  But  that 
the  Latin  temper  also  fostered  superstition  and  spiritual 
despotism,  and  that  the  tightening  of  links  to  Rome  had 
some  ill  effects  on  English  Church  freedom,  are  positions 
which  mediaeval  history  sets  far  above  all  doubt.  Yet  the 
reader  of  Bede  can  hardly  look  forward,  at  this  point, 
without  soon  looking  backward,  under  the  spell  of  that 
noble  and  loving  testimony  which  the  Northumbrian  his- 
torian records  in  honour  of  the  first  three  bishops  of  Lindis- 
farne,  and  of  the  clergy  or  monks  who  imbibed  their  spirit 
of  single-hearted  goodness,  of  pure  unworldliness,  of  devo- 
tion to  sacred  duty  ^.  '  The  very  place  which  they  governed ' 
spoke  of  these  virtues  by  its  appearance  :  there  were,  beside 
the  wooden  church,  only  just  so  many  buildings  as  were 
absolutely  necessary  for  the  community  life.  The  monastery 
had  no  money,  but  only  cattle.  Gifts  of  money  glided 
through  the  hands  of  Finan  or  Colman,  as  through  Aidan's  ^, 
straight  into  the  hands  of  the  poor.  No  need  was  there  for 
guest-houses  to  entertain  noble  visitors  :  such  persons,  if 
they  did  visit  Lindisfarne,  came  but  for  prayer  and  sermon, 
and  were  content  with  the  brethren's  simple  and  daily  food  ^. 
This  was  the  case  with  Oswy  himself,  as  with  Oswald:  'he 

'  See  Skene,  Celtic  Scotland,  ii.  63  flf.,  366  ;  Green,  Making  of  England, 
pp.  284,  317,  324.  Professor  G.  T.  Stokes  owns  that,  in  the  twelfth  century, 
'the  Celtic  Christian  organization  had  utterly  broken  down,'  had  failed 
to  '  rule  and  tame  the  wild  Celt ' ;  Ireland  and  Celtic  Ch.  p.  341.  It  thus 
actually  contributed  to  the  chaos  which  gave  an  opportunity  to  Strongbow. 

^  *  Quantae  autem  parsimoniao,'  &c.  ;  Bede,  iii.  26. 

2  See  Bede,  iii.  5  :  *  Ea  potius  quae  sibi  a  divitibus,'  &c. :  and  iii.  14. 

*  Bede,  iii.  26 :  '  Nam  neque  ad  susceptionem  potentium  saeculi,'  &c. 


234  The  Scotic  Clergy  in  contrast 

CHAP.  VT.  would  come  with  ^n^  or  six  thanes,  and  depart  when  prayer 
in  the  church  was  over.'  The  effect  produced  on  the  people 
of  Northumbria  might  be  seen  in  the  glad  welcome  given 
to  any  cleric  or  monk :  if  he  were  on  a  journey,  people  ran 
up  to  him  and  '  bent  their  heads  in  joyful  expectation  of 
being  "signed"  by  his  hand  or  blessed  by  his  lips, — and 
then  listened  earnestly  to  his  words  of  exhortation.  And 
on  Sundays  they  vied  with  each  other  in  hastening  to 
church,  or  to  monasteries,  not  for  the  sake  of  getting  a 
meal,  but  to  hear  God's  word  :  and  if  a  priest  happened  to 
come  into  a  township,  the  inhabitants  would  speedily 
assemble,  and  beg  to  hear  from  him  the  word  of  life.'  For 
'  well  they  knew  that  he  was  come  for  the  sake  of  souls,  to 
preach,  to  baptize,  and  visit  the  sick,' — that  is,  on  one  of 
those  mission  circuits  which  supplied  to  some  extent  the 
lack  of  parochial  organization.  They  knew  that  the  thing 
farthest  from  a  priest's  thoughts  was,  what  he  could  get  out 
of  them  ^  Indeed,  the  bishops  and  clergy  of  that  genera- 
tion were  so  clear  of  all  suspicion  of  self-seeking,  so  free 
from  '  that  pest  of  avarice,'  that  except  under  compulsion 
they  could  not  be  got  to  receive  lands  for  building  monas- 
teries. '  But  enough  of  this,'  Bede  concludes  :  and  we  can 
'  read  between  the  lines '  of  his  panegyric  a  mournful  and 
indignant  reflexion  on  the  contrast  presented  by  the  monks 
or  clergy  of  his  own  time.  Here  lies  the  point  of  his 
emphasis  ^,  '  For  then  the  whole  anxiety  of  those  teachers 
was,  not  how  to  serve  the  world,  but  how  to  serve  God : 
their  whole  care  was  to  provide,  not  for  the  belly,  but  for 
the  heart.  This  was  the  reason  why,  at  that  time,  the 
religious  habit  was  held  in  such  veneration.'  *  The  custom 
of  not  willingly  accepting  endowments  was  preserved  in 

^  Compare  the  title  of*  the  three  blessed  visitors '  given  to  St.  David, 
St,  Padarn,  St.  Teilo,  because  they  taught  without'  accepting  any  reward, 
even  in  food,  Kees' Welsh  Saints,  p.  197  ;  Williams,  Eccl.  Antiq.  of  Cymry, 

p.  133. 

"  '  Tota  enim  fuit  iioic  solicitude  .  .  .  tempore  illo  .  .  .  aliquanto  post  haec 
tempore;'  Bede,  iii.  a6.  Compare  another  passage,  iii.  5,  'nostri  tem- 
poris  segnitia ; '  iv.  37,  '  Erat  quippe  moris  eo  tempore,'  &c.  ;  and  iv.  3, 
*  Non  enim  ad  otium,  ut  quidani,  sed  ad  laborem,  se  monasterium  intrare 
signabat.' 


with  Bedels  younger  contemporaries.     235 

Northumbrian  churches  for  some  time  afterwards  \'  He  chap.  vr. 
means  to  say,  '  We  are  living  in  a  changed  world :  the  fine 
gold  is  become  dim :  secularity  has  tainted  and  enfeebled 
the  Church.'  It  was  the  last  effort  of  Bede  for  his  Church 
when  he  wrote  the  memorable  letter  to  Egbert,  then  a  young 
bishop  of  York,  afterwards  its  first  archbishop,  entreating 
him  to  correct  abuses  which  had  crept  into  monasteries,  to 
raise  the  tone  of  the  clergy,  to  restore  pious  habits  among 
the  people  ^. 

And  so  we  bid  farewell  to  that  old  Scotic  Church  of 
Northumbria.  It  could  not  but  pass  away,  for  it  could  not 
provide  what  Northumbria  then  needed :  it  had  but  a  tem- 
porary mission,  but  that  mission  it  fulfilled  with  a  rare 
simplicity  of  purpose.  It  brought  religion  straight  home 
to  men's  hearts  by  sheer  power  of  love  and  self-sacrifice : 
it  held  up  before  them,  in  the  unconscious  goodness  and 
nobleness  of  its  representatives,  the  moral  evidence  for 
Christianity.  It  made  them  feel  what  it  was  to  be  taught 
and  cared  for,  in  the  life  spiritual,  by  pastors  who  before 
all  things  were  the  disciples  and  ministers  of  Christ, — 
whose  chief  and  type  was  a  St.  Aidan. 

^  A  like  custom  existed  in  the  old  Irish  Church,  and  was  traced  up  to 
St.  Patrick  ;  see  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  310  :  *  but  the  munificence  of 
tribes  and  princes  was  not  to  be  restrained  ; '  M^Gee,  Hist.  Irel.  i.  134. 

2  Ep.  ad  Egbert.  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  10,  &c.  There  is  a  melancholy  emphasis 
in  the.  concluding  words  of  the  letter.  Bede  had  urged  Egbert  to  contend 
against  the  prevalence  of  avarice  :  '  Caeterum  si  de  ebrietate, .  .  .  et  caeteris 
hujusmodi  contagionibus,  pari  ratione  tractare  voluerimus,  epistolae  modus 
in  immensum  extenderetur.'  His  was  the  bitter  experience  of  one  who, 
personally  loyal  to  a  high  and  pure  standard,  lives  to  see  it  ignored  by  a 
generation  which  has  succumbed  to  degrading  influences,  by  a  ChurcJi 
that  has  fallen  from  its  first  love.  But  it  is  right  to  remember  that  this 
decadence  was  largely  due  to  the  wild  disorder  which  filled  Northumbria 
during  the  reigns  of  Osred,  Kenred,  Osric,  and  Coolwulf.  After  Bede's 
death,  Egbert's  pious  energy  must  have  told  for  good  on  his  Church.  See 
the  account  of  his  illustrious  archiepiscopate  in  Raine's  Fast.  Ebor.  p.  96. 


CHAPTER    VIL 

Tuda  at  The  vacant  see  of  Lindisfarne  was  filled  up,  probably  in 

favneT  ^^®  early  summer  of  664,  by  the  appointment  of  Tuda  ^.  It 
was  the  obvious  choice  to  make  ;  and  Northumbrian  church- 
men might  look  forward  hopefully,  in  the  phrase  afterwards 
used  at  consecrations,  to  '  many  years  ^ '  under  one  who 
had  been  virtually  acting  as  coadjutor-bishop,  w^ho  would 
be  w^elcome  to  many  as  of  the  same  race  with  the  three 
former  bishops,  and  also  unexceptionable  to  the  most 
fastidious  orthodoxy  on  the  questions  of  '  Catholic  Pasch ' 
and  'crown-like  tonsure.'  But,  as  often  befell  in  the 
chequered  history  of  newly-planted  Churches,  these  hopes 
were  soon  disappointed  by  an  event  which  justifies  us  in 
placing  our  survey  of  the  Celtic  episcopate  of  Lindisfarne 
after  the  retirement  of  his  predecessor.  The  bishop, 
*  a  good  man  and  a  religious,  governed  the  Church  but 
The  a  very  short  time  ^.'     There  swept  over  the  island,  in  this 

Pest^^  year,  one  of  those  fierce  pestilences  which  gave  to  the  word 
'  mortality '  so  terrible  a  significance  in  the  records  of  that 
age.  It  was  about  a  century  since  the  plague  which  we 
connect  with  Justinian's  reign  had  slain  its  thousands  all 
over  Europe,  had  raged  in  Britain  and  in  Ireland  *,  and  had 

^  Bede,  iii.  26  :  '  Suscepit  pro  illo  pontificatum,'  &c. 

^  The  custom  may  have  been  older  than  the  office  which  embodies  it 
in  Muratori,  Lit.  Rom.  ii.  443. 

^  Bede,  1.  c.  :  '  Vir  quidem  bonus,'  &c.  Eddi  wholly  ignores  Tuda,  and 
describes  Wilfred  as  elected  to  succeed  Colman. 

*  Gibbon,  v.  253.  Comp.  Ann.  Camb.  a.  537,  '  Mortalitas  in  Brittannia  et 
in  Hibernia  fuit.'  lb.  a.  547,  '  Mortalitas  magna.'  Tighernach  mentions 
three  pestilences  in  the  sixth  century.  See  Rees,  Welsh  Saints,  p.  243. 
King  Maelgwyn  died  of  this  plague.  It  returned  in  Teilo's  time,  where- 
upon he  retired  into  Armorica  :  and  it  carried  off  a  Cornish  king,  Geraint. 
It  is  referred  to  in  Gregory  the  Great's  Dialogues,  iv.  38. 


Ravages  of  the  ^Yellow  Pest/         237 

repeatedly,  in  the  days  of  the  devout  Frankish  king  chap.  vir. 
Gontran,  been  made  an  occasion  for  '  Rogations '  and 
public  fasts  ^.  In  our  islands  it  was  known  as  the 
'  Yellow  Pest,'  from  the  ghastly  yellow  hue  of  its  victims' 
bodies  ^ :  and  now,  before  reappearing  in  Ireland,  it  visited 
Britain  soon  after  a  solar  eclipse  in  May  ^.  Its  coming  was 
unexpected  *  :  it  smote  down  high  and  low,  not  sparing  the 
king  of  the  Kentishmen,  nor  the  archbishop  of  Canterbury 
himself.  Both  died  on  the  same  day,  July  14  ^.  Erconbert 
was  succeeded  by  his  son  Egbert :  but  the  seat  of  Augustine 
remained  vacant  for  four  years.  It  seems  that  Damian 
bishop  of  Rochester  succumbed  at  the  same  time  to  the 
epidemic :  and  his  seat  was  long  unfilled  ^.  When  in  its 
onward  sweep  the  pest  entered  the  North- country,  it 
'  hurried  Tuda  out  of  this  world,'  and  he  was  buried  in  a 
monastery  called  Psegnalsech  '^, — supposed  to  be  Finchale, — 
or  in  the  Chronicle,  Wa^ele, — perhaps  Whalley.  It  seems 
also  that  we  must  refer  to  the  October  of  this  year  the 
death  of  Bishop  Cedd,  who,  after   returning  home  from 


^  Greg.  Turon.  H.  Fr.  ix.  sr,  22  ;  x.  30. 

2  'Flavos  et  exsangues,'  Lib.  Landav.  p.  lor.  It  is  there  added,  in 
legendary  style,  that  the  pest  seemed  to  float  along  like  a  pillar  of  watery 
cloud,  or  like  showers  traversing  a  glen.  Those  who  tried  to  cure  patients 
died  themselves.  See  Pryce's  Anc.  Brit.  Ch.  p.  163,  that  its  worst 
symptoms  were  inflamed  tumours.  See  Ann.  Cambr.  p.  121,  'lallwelen' 
(*  Y  vail  valen'^,  the  yellow  plague. 

2  See  Bede,  iii.  27  :  '  Facta  erat,'  &c.  He  dates  the  eclipse  on  May  3  : 
but  it  was  on  May  i  ;  see  Usher,  Antiq.  p.  491.  So  the  Irish  annalists.  They 
also  say  that  '  the  mortality  came  to  Ireland  '  on  Aug.  i.  Tighernach  gives 
the  right  year,  664  ;  see  O'Conor,  Rer.  Hib.  Scr.  ii.  203-4  >  the  Ulster  Annals 
say  663  (ib.  iv.  55)  ;  and  the  Chronicon  Scotorum,  660, — but  the  latter  is 
'four  years  in  arrear '  at  this  period  (.Introd.  p.  xlv).  The  pest  broke  out 
in  Fothairt,  co.  Wexford.  It  carried  off  Ethelhun,  but  spared  his  com- 
panion Egbert,  for  whose  prayer,  and  vow  'peregrinus  vivere,'  see  Bede, 
iii.  27.  *  Innumerabiles  mortui  sunt,'  Ulster  Ann.  Adamnan  ascribes 
the  immunity  of  the  *plebs  Pictorum  et  Scotorum  Britanniae'  to 
St.  Columba's  intercession  ;  Vit.  Col.  ii.  46. 

*  '  Subita,*  Bede  ;  see  v.  24,  '  Et  pestilentia  venit.' 

'  Bede,  iv.  i:  'Eodem  mense  ac  die.'  Tighernach  names  five  Irish 
kings,  and  several  prelates,  including  four  abbots  of  (Irish)  Bangor,  as 
its  victims. 

*  Bede,  iv.  2.  end. 

'  Bede,  iii.  27  :  '  Qua  plaga,'  &c.     See  Haddan  and  Stubb?,  iii.  444. 


238  Relapse  of  some  East-Saxons, 

CHAP.  VII.  Whitby  as  a  conformist  to  the  '  Catholic  Easter,'  had  re- 
visited Lastingham '  in  the  time  of  the  mortality  V  a-nd  there 
died.  He  was  buried  outside  the  wooden  church  which  he 
had  raised  on  the  ground  that  he  and  his  brother  had 
hallowed :  another  brother,  Chad,  succeeded  him  as  abbot. 
His  East-Saxons  were  differently  affected  by  the  scourge 
of  the  Yellow  Pest.  Some  who  were  ruled,  under  the  over- 
lordship  of  Wulfhere,  then  extending  over  all  Essex,  by 
Sebbi,  brother  of  Sigebert  the  Little,  stood  the  trial  of  their 
faith  and  patience,  and  *  clung  with  great  devotion  to  the 
Relapse  creed  which  they  had  received  2/  In  the  other  division  of 
East-^^  the  small  kingdom,  where  Sebbi's  nephew  Sighere  reigned, 
Snxons.  the  sudden  affliction  (as  was  often  the  case  in  those  ages) 
had  the  effect  of  throwing  the  people  back  on  their  old 
worship,  as  if  they  were  smitten  for  having  deserted  it,  or 
as  if  they  had  expected  the  Cross  to  be  a  safeguard  against 
suffering  ^.  '  Sighere,  and  very  many  of  the  people  or  the 
earls,  loving  this  life,  and  not  seeking  another,  or  even  not 
believing  it  to  exist,  began  to  restore  the  Pagan  temples 
which  had  been  forsaken,  and  to  worship  images,  as  if  by 
means  of  these  they  could  be  shielded  from  the  mortality  *.' 
In  the  valley  of  the  Tweed  also,  some,  in  whose  minds  '  the 
seed  had  no  deepness  of  earth,'  '  neglected  the  mysteries  of 
faith  which  they  had  received,'  and  tried  to  obtain  relief 
from  the  disease  by  heathenish  '  spells  or  amulets  ^.'     At 

*  Bede,  iii.  23  :  *  Qui  cum  annis  multis,'&c.,  and  Stubbs,  Registrum,  p.  2. 
See  Bede's  touching  story  of  the  thirty  Essex  monks  who  came  to  live  or 
die  beside  his  grave. 

2  Bede,  iii.  30.     Sighere  had  a  son  and  successor,  Offa. 

^  See  Robertson,  Hist.  Ch.  iii.  477.  Compare  Adam  nan,  Vit.  Col.  ii.  32  ; 
the  Pictish  '  magi,*  seeing  a  newly-baptized  boy  dying  of  sudden  illness, 
began  to  mock  at  his  parents,  and  '  Christianorum,  tanquam  infirmiori, 
Deo  derogare.' 

*  Bede,  iii.  30  :  *  Nam  et  ipse  rex,'  &c.  These  relapses  were  common 
enough,  especially  among  the  Frisians  :  e.  g.  see  the  anonymous  Life  of 
St.  Boniface,  ii.  20,  'Olim  .  .  .  converses  sed  .  .  .  iterum  quosdam  eorum 
ad  pristinum  gentilitatis  errorem  devolutos.'  Councils  take  cognizance  of 
such  cases  ;  e.  g.  second  of  Orleans,  c.  20,  '  qui  ad  idolorum  cultum  rever- 
tuntur  ;'  Mansi,  viii.  838.  See  also  Greg.  Ep.  viii.  i,  as  to  Corsicans.  Comp. 
Maclear,  Ap.  of  Med.  Europe,  p.  146,  and  Conversion  of  Northmen,  p.  199, 
on  heathen  reactions ;  and  Alb.  Butler,  Nov.  21. 

^  Bede,  iv.  27,  and  Vit.  Cuthb.  9,  *  per  incantationes  vel  alligaturas,'  or 
'  fylacteria.'    Comp.  the  prohibition  of  phylacteries  and  ligatures  by  a 


Cuthbert^s  work  at  Melrose.  239 

Melrose  Cuthbert  himself  caught  the  infection:  he  recovered,  chap.  vh. 
although  for  the  rest  of  his  life  he  felt  some  effects  of  his 
illness :  but  Boisil,  his  beloved  prior,  died,  after  tranquilly 
spending  the  last  week  of  his  life  in  reading  St.  John's 
Gospel  with  Cuthbert  \  who  succeeded  to  his  office,  and 
added  to  its  duties,  after  Boisil's  example,  the  work  of  an 
evangelist  throughout  the  adjacent  country.  To  sustain  Cuthbert, 
the  rude  people  in  their  faith,  or  reclaim  them  to  it,  he  Melrose. 
would  go  out,  on  foot  or  on  horseback  2,  and  sometimes  be 
absent  from  the  monastery  for  weeks  together,  penetrating 
into  the  wildest  valleys,  climbing  steep  hill-sides,  and  thus 
finding  access  to  poor  hamlets  which  other  teachers  had 
shrunk  from  visiting,  through  'horror'  of  their  dreary 
situation,  or  distaste  for  their  'poverty  and  rusticity^.' 
Not  such  was  this  '  true  man  of  God,'  as  Bede  repeatedly 
calls  him.     He  attracted  those  '  shepherdless  sheep '  by  the 

German  Council  in  745,  Migne,  Patr.  Lat.  Ixxxix.  812  ;  and  on  the  rumour 
that  they  were  used  even  in  Rome,  St.  Boniface,  Ep.  49,  63,  and  cf.  ib.  Ep. 
63.  At  Constantinople  the  TruUan  synod  had  occasion  to  threaten  dealers 
in  amulets  (whom  it  calls  c{)vKaKTr]piovs)  with  excommunication,  can.  61. 
Compare  the  Report  of  the  Central  African  Mission  for  1876,  p.  10  :  '  One 
old  chief  .  .  .  could  not  bring  himself  at  the  last  moment  to  abandon 
his  amulets,  in  which,  he  said,  his  fathers  had  trusted  from  time  imme- 
morial ;  and  so,  for  a  time,  his  admission  was  deferred.' 

^  Bede,  *  quo  tempore,'  Vit.  Cuthb.  8,  would  strictly  refer  to  661,  when 
Eata  and  his  monks  returned  from  Ripon  to  Melrose.  But  the  following 
words  clearly  point  to  the  great  epidemic  of  664,  *morbo  .  .  .  quo  tunc 
plurimi  per  Britanniam  .  .  .  deficiebant.'  For  Boisil's  last  days  see  the 
beautiful  account  in  Bede,  1.  c.  '  As  I  have  but  seven  days  to  live,'  said 
Boisil,  *  learn  all  you  can  from  me.'  *  What  can  we  get  through  in  seven 
days  ? '  'St.  John's  Gospel  :  I  have  a  codex  in  seven  quarto  sheets  :  we 
can  take  one  each  day.'  They  read  it  through  in  that  time,  '  quia  solum 
in  ea  (lectione)  fidei  quae  per  dilectionem  operatur  simplicitatem,  non 
autem  quaestionum  profunda,  tractabant.'  (Bede's  own  death-bed  was  to 
exhibit  a  scene  somewhat  like  this,  and  quite  as  touching.)  Simeon  of 
Durham  says  (Hist.  Dun.  Eccl.  i.  3,  Op.  i.  22)  that  a  '  codex  *  in  which 
Cuthbert  used  to  read  under  Boisil's  teaching  was  still  extant  in  Durham 
monastery,  *  prisca  novitate  ac  decore  mirabilis.*     See  also  Bede,  V.  C.  22. 

2  So  Bede,  iv.  27,  Vit.  Cuthb.  9  ;  (identical  passages  on  the  whole).  See 
the  story  in  Vit.  Cuthb.  12  :  '  Cum  praedicaturus  .  .  .  de  monasterio  exiret, 
uno  comite  puero.*  See  above,  p.  234,  on  the  serious  interest  with  which 
the  people  then  listened  to  preaching. 

^  Bede,  iv.  27  :  *  In  viculis  qui  in  arduis  asperisque  montibus,'  &c.  Cp. 
Scott, 

'Where  .  .  .  Eildon  slopes  to  the  plain.* 


240  Wilfrid^  Bishop-elect. 

CHAP.  VII.  fascination  of  his  presence  and  his  words.  '  So  great  was 
his  skill  in  speaking,  so  intense  his  eagerness  to  make  his 
words  persuasive,  such  a  glow  lighted  up  his  angelic  face  \ 
that  no  one  of  those  present  dared  to  hide  from  Cuthbert 
the  secrets  of  his  heart :  all  revealed  openly  ^,  by  confession, 
what  they  had  done,  for  in  truth  they  supposed  that  he 
must  needs  be  aware  of  those  very  deeds  of  theirs ;  and 
after  confession  they  wiped  away  their  sins  at  his  bidding, 
by  worthy  fruits  of  repentance  "V  finding  the  best  enforce- 
ment of  his  exhortations  in  the  generous  charity  which 
brought  him  among  them  rather  than  into  more  attractive 
places^,  in  the  untiring  energy  with  which  he  'devoted 
himself  to  this  pious  labour,'  above  all  in  his  personal 
example, — in  himself^.  Such  was  his  life  at  Melrose  for 
several  years  ^. 
Wilfrid  But  we  must  return  from  the  work  of  a  young  saint  to 

Wsl^op  of  ^^®  ecclesiastical  politics  of  a  kingdom.  Who  was  to  be  the 
York.  bishop  of  Northumbria  ?  It  seems  that  the  Witan  were 
assembled  to  decide  the  point,  which,  as  may  be  inferred 
from  later  instances'^,  fell  within  the  province  of  the 
national  assembly,  including,  as  it  did,  the  leading  eccle- 
siastics. Alchfrid,  as  sub-king  of  Deira,  would  contribute 
much  to  the  decision  arrived  at  in  favour  of  Wilfrid.  Eddi 
says  that '  all  answered  with  one  consent,  "  There  is  no  one 
of  our  race  better  and  worthier  than  Wilfrid  the  presbyter 
and  abbot.'"     He  was   then  about  thirty  years  old:    his 

1  '  Tale  vultus  angelici  lumen,'  Bede.  '  Erat  aspectu  angelicus,'  Anon. 
Vit.  The  beauty  was  probably  in  the  expression  ;  for  at  the  exhumation 
of  his  skeleton  in  1827  he  was  found  to  have  had  a  prominent  upper  jaw, 
a  turned-up  nose,  and  a  deeply-indented  chin  (ep.  Reginald,  Libellus  de  S.C. 
c.  41).  The  skeleton  measured  5  ft.  8  in.  ;  Raine's  St.  Cuthbert,  p.  213  ff. 
He  had  black  hair,  Sim.  Op.  i.  204. 

^  *  Palam,'  in  the  sense  of  hiding  nothing  from  him. 

3  *  Et  confessa  dignis,  ut  imperabat,  poenitentiae  fructibus  abstergerent.' 

*  *  Solebat  autem  ea  maxime  loca  peragrare,*  &©. 

5  *  Verbo  praedicationis  simul  et  opere  virtutis.'  Compare  Bede,  i.  26; 
ill.  5,  &c.     See  also  above,  p.  56. 

«  '  Multos  annos,'  Bede,  iv.  27,  Vit.  Cuthb.  16  ;  '  aliquot  annos,'  V.  C.  9. 
Even  if  he  had  become  prior  in  661,  this  would  hardly  allow  us  to  date  his 
removal  to  Lindisfarne  in  664,  as  Simeon  does,  Dun.  Eccl.  i.  c.  6. 

'  See  Kemble,  ii.  221,  referring  to  cases  in  the  Chronicle  and  in  Florence  ; 
e.  g.  Oskytel  was  made  archbishop  of  York  by  the  favour  of  King  Eadred 


Consecration  of  Wilfrid.  241 

biographer  dwells  fondly  on  his  ability  in  preaching,  his  chap.  vh. 
discriminating  treatment  of  different  characters,  his  '  mar- 
vellous memory,'  his  devotion,  his  beneficence  to  the 
afflicted  ^  Wilfrid,  then,  was  to  be  bishop :  but,  probably 
at  his  desire,  and  cei^ainly  with  good  reason,  it  was  re- 
solved to  replace  the  bishopric  at  York.  He  was  to  preside 
in  the  minster  '  that  Edwin  and  Oswald  had  erected  ^.'  But 
who  was  to  consecrate  him  ?  Deusdedit,  and  probably 
Damian,  were  dead  :  Cedd  was  still  alive  at  the  time,  but  he 
would  have  the  disadvantage,  in  Wilfrid's  eye,  of  Scotic 
consecration  :  and  the  same  drawback  existed  in  regard  to 
Jaruman  of  Mercia.  Wini  would  be  objectionable  as  the 
supplanter,  in  effect,  of  Agilbert.  There  remained  Boniface 
of  Dunwich,  who  had  been  consecrated  by  Archbishop 
Honorius  ^ ;  but  Wilfrid  would  wish  to  have  the  canonical 
*  three  consecrators ' ;  and  his  own  strong  predilection  for 
the  country  where  he  had  spent  some  years,  and  learned  so 
much,  would  be  an  additional  motive  for  requesting  to  be 
consecrated  in  Gaul.  It  was  so  arranged :  he  went  over 
to  that  country,  and  was  consecrated  at  Compiegne,  in 
Neustria,  at   the   end   of  664  or  the  beginning  of  665  *. 

and  all  his  Witan  ;  Chron.  a.  971.  See  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  157.  Comp. 
Greg.  Turon.  H.  Fr.  ix.  21,  '  Charimerem  referendarium  cum  consensu 
civium  regalis  decrevit  auctoritas  fieri  sacerdotem.*  Plumnier  thinks  it 
probable  that  Wilfrid  was  elected  during  Tuda's  lifetime  to  be  bishop  of 
Deira  only.  But,  as  he  himself  admits,  Tuda  was  '  bishop  of  the  Northum- 
brians '  in  general :  and  as  we  should  certainly  infer  from  Bede  that  Wilfrid's 
election  was  subsequent  to  the  death  of  Tuda,  who  had  held  the  '  pontifi- 
oatus  Nordanhymbrorum,'  so  we  are  expressly  informed  by  Eddi  that 
the  election  to  the  '  vacant  see  '  took  place  in  a  full  Northumbrian  Witan. 
Bede  might  dwell  on  Alchfrid's  peculiar  interest  in  the  matter  (*  sibi  suis- 
que,'  iii.  28),  because  the  Northumbrian  episcopate  was  again  to  be  stationed 
in  Deira. 

*  Eddi,  c.  II.  2  Raine,  Fast.  Ebor.  i.  62. 

^  Eddi  makes  Wilfrid  say  to  the  kings,  '•  It  is  not  my  place  to  accuse 
any  one  ;  but  there  are  many  bishops  in  Britain  who  are  either  Quarto- 
decimans,  as  the  Britons  and  Scots,  or  have  been  ordained  by  them.' 
According  to  Bede,  he  had  virtually  urged,  at  Whitby,  that  the  Britons 
and  Scots  were  not  really  Quartodecimans.  Eddi  is  simply  using  the  term 
loosely,  in  the  temper  of  a  partisan,  as  in  c.  14,  15.  Malmesbury  does  the 
same,  Gest.  Pontif.  iii.  100. 

*  So  Mabillon,  Ann.  Benedict,  i.  478.  Bede  says  that  he  died  after  forty- 
five  years  of  episcopate  ;  v.  19.  Eddi  assigns  him  forty-six  years,  meaning, 
doubtless,  that  he  died  in  the  forty-sixth,  c.  65.     He  died,  we  know,  in  709 : 

R 


242  Consecration  of  Wilfrid. 

CHAP.  vn.  The  place  was  a  royal  '  villa/  where  '  the  wild  Chlotair  ^  * 
had  died,  and  where  the  treasures  of  Dagobert  I  had  been 
kept :    it  now  belonged   to   the   young  '  Faineant '  king, 
Consecra-   Chlotair  III.     The  ceremony  was  performed  with  unusual 
Wilfrid  in  magnificence,  as  if  the  Frankish  hierarchy  wished  to  do 
Gaul.         special    honour    to    the   disciple    of   Aunemund   and   the 
champion  of  the  Catholic  Easter.     Twelve  prelates  offici- 
ated, including  Agilbert,  who  had  returned  to  his  native 
country  after  the  conference  ^ :    and  '  after  their  custom 
they  lifted  Wilfrid  up  in  a  golden  seat,  and  carried  him 
with  their  own  hands,  assisted  by  no  one  else,'  in  a  choral 
procession,  to  the  church  where  he  was  to  be  consecrated  ^ 
This  singular  custom  was  known  to  Gregory  the  Great,  who 
presented  to  Gregory  of  Tours  '  a  golden  chair '  for  use  in 
his  church  *.     Wilfrid  was  thoroughly  at  home  amid  such 

if  the  day  was  in  October  (see  Raine,  i.  76),  the  literal  construction  of  the 
reckoning  places  the  consecration  in  the  early  autumn  of  664  ;  but  as  this 
crowds  a  good  deal  into  that  seasoli,  and  causes  sorne  difficulty  in  regard 
to  after  events,  we  may  perhaps  suppose  Bede  to  reckon  from  Wilfrid's 
election.  The  fixed  points  are,  that  he  cannot  well  have  been  elected  before 
the  atitumti  of  664  :  that  in  some  sense  he  had  full  forty-five  years  of  epis- 
copate :  that  he  returned  to  Northumbria  three  years  before  the  late  summer 
of  669,  and  that  Chad,  during  that  period,  held  the  see  of  York  :  comp. 
Bede,  V.  19  ;  Fddi,  14.  If  Wilfrid  went  into  Gaul  towards  the  close  of 
664,  he  must  have  stayed  there  until  the  spring  of  666.  The  consecration 
would  be  deferred  until  a  large  number  of  bishops  could  assemble  :  and 
some  other  circumstances,  noW  unknown,  may  have  contributed  to  keep 
Wilfrid  in  Gaul  for  more  than  a  year.  It  is  true,  as  Plummer  says,  that 
in  V.  24,  Bede  '  distinctly  places  Wilfrid's  consecration  in  664 ' :  but  in  the 
same  sentence  he  does  the  like  as  to  Chad's.  And  Chad  was  not  conse- 
cl-ated  until  Oswy  had  become  weary  of  waiting  for  Wilfrid's  return  from 
Gaul,  -Vvhither  he  can  hardly  have  gone  before  the  September  of  664  at 
earliest.  We  must  therefore  allow  a  *  considerable  '  interval  between  his 
joufney  and  Chad's  consecration  (Raine  in  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  iv.  1180). 

^  Carlyle,  Fr.  Rev.  i.  28  ;  see  Greg.  Turon.  H.  Fr.  iv.  21. 

^  He  was  not  yet,  as  Bede  thought  (iii.  28  ;  v.  19),  bishop  of  Paris.  See 
above,  p.  209. 

'  Eddi,  12.  *  Gemmata  vehitur  archontum  more  curuli;*  Frid.  351. 
Cp.  Martene,  de  Ant.  Eccl.  Rit.  ii.  332,  that  by  ^ancient  custom  in  Gallic 
churches  (long  kept  up  at  Orleans)  a  newly-consecrated  bishop,  on  arriving 
at  the  city,  was  placed  in  a  chair  and  carried  'humeris  religiosorum  *  or 
'nobilium'  into  his  cathedral  for  enthronement :  a  Soissons  ritual  is  quoted, 
according  to  which  the  new  prelate  *  elevatur  cum  cathedra '  to  be  carried 
*  ad  majorem  ecclesiam  '  by  the  count  of  Soissons,  and  three  other  '  lords.' 

*  Bened.  Vit.  Greg.  M.  iii.  3.  8.  Compare  the  *  sella  gestatoria  '  of  the 
popes. 


His  return  from  Gaul,  243 

splendour  and  such  observance ;  and  he  was  tempted  to  ^"^^i'-  vir. 
protract  his  enjoyment  of  Frankish  church  life  ^,  or  other- 
wise detained  by  circumstances  in  Gaul,  long  after  the 
time  at  which  he  was  expected  to  appear  in  Northumbria. 
At  last,  in  the  spring  of  666,  he  sailed  for  Britain,  with 
a  hundred  and  twenty  attendants.  A  wind  drove  them  on 
the  Sussex  coast ;  and  then  came  a  scene  of  excitement  and 
peril  to  be  remembered  for  the  sake  of  a  later  chapter  in 
his  history,  perhaps  the  best  chapter  of  all.  The  Sussex 
barbarians  rushed  down  to  seize  on  the  distressed  vessel, 
and  to  despoil  and  capture  all  on  board.  Wilfrid  tried  to 
buy  them  off:  they  answered,  like  true  ^  wreckers  ^,'  '  All  is 
ours  that  the  sea  throws  up  ! '  A  pagan  priest,  standing  on 
a  high  mound,  tried  to  *  bind  the  strangers'  hands '  by 
magic  ^ :  one  of  Wilfrid's  company  slew  him  with  a  stone 
from  a  sling  * :  in  the  fight  that  followed,  the  bishop  and 
his  clerks  prayed,  while  their  companions  did  valiantly, 
losing  only  five  men  :  at  last  the  tide  floated  the  vessel  off, 
and  it  made  Sandwich  in  safety. 

Wilfrid  was  soon  again  at  home,  but  found  that  he  had  Wilfrid's 
been  far  too  long  absent  ^.  The  defeated  party,  while  con- 
forming to  the  Catholic  Easter,  disliked  his  general  line, 
and  thought,  perhaps,  that  his  rule  would  be  too  high- 
handed. While  he  lingered  in  Oaul,  they  rallied,  and 
represented  to  Oswy  that  the  Church  could  not  await  the 
leisure  of  a  bishop  who  did  not  come  home  to  begin  his 
work  ^.     They  had  thought  of  one  who  would  be  fitter  for 

^  Malmesb.  p.  211  :  'Moras  nectente.' 

"^  On  this  barbarous  '•  right  of  wreck,'  which  on  many  a  coast  long  sur-. 
vived  the  introduction  of  Christianity,  see  Freeman,  Norm.  Conq.  ill.  223, 
and  compare  Scott's  Pirate,  i.  113,  329,  ed.  A.  Lang. 

'  Comp.  Bede,  iv.  22,  for  '  litteras  solutorias  de  qualibus  fabulae  ferunt.* 
The  South-Saxons  were  still  immersed  in  paganism. 

*  '  He  fell  back  a  corpse,  like  Goliath  ; '  Eddi,  13. 

^  Bede  excuses  him,  as  if  he  '  tarried  *  no  longer  than  the  *  ordination  * 
required,  in  iii.  28  ;  in  v.  19  he  omits  *  propter  ordinationem.'  It  does  not 
seem  possible  to  reconcile  the  former  statement  with  other  marks  of  time. 
Three  years  elapsed  between  the  return  of  Wilfrid  and  the  retirement  of 
Chad  after  Theodore's  arrival  in  669, 

*  See  Raine,  i.  48  :  *  They  commented  .  .  .  upon  the  injury  that  North- 
umbria was  sustaining  by  Wilfrid's  prolonged  and  unaccountable 
absence.' 


244  Consecration  of  Chad 

OHAP.  vn.  the  bishopric :  *  a  holy  man,  grave  in  character,  sufficiently 
instructed  in  Scripture,  diligent  in  acting  up  to  Scripture 
precepts  ^ : '  a  man  of  prayer,  study,  humility,  purity, 
voluntary  poverty  ^  :  who  had  been  one  of  Aidan's  original 
'  twelve  boys  'V  and  then,  as  a  youth,  had  lived  in  Ireland 
under  monastic  discipline  ^,  This  was  Chad,  abbot  of 
Lastingham,  and  brother  of  the  East-Saxon  bishop.  Was 
not  such  a  man  the  fittest  occupant  of  Aidan's  seat  ?  Oswy 
assented  to  this  view :  Alchfrid  would  doubtless  have  stood 
out  against  it  on  behalf  of  his  absent  friend,  but  that  just 
at  this  time  he  fell  under  his  father's  displeasure,  who  com- 
pelled him  to  give  up  his  intention  of  accompanying 
Benedict  Biscop  on  his  second  journey  to  Rome  ^ ;  and  it 
would  seem  that  Bede's  brief  unexplained  statement, 
naming  Alchfrid  with  Ethelwald  and  the  Mercians  among 
the  various  enemies  of  Oswy^,  refers  to  some  rebellious 
movement  of  Alchfrid  after  this  time,  which  led  to  his 

Chad  con-  being  disinherited  and  '  disappearing  from  history  '^!     So 

Q  ^ /*  1*  <v  f*  zi  r  j 

for  York.  ^^  was  that  Chad  was  elected  bishop,  and  went  into  the 
south  for  consecration,  attended  by  the  king's  chaplain, 
Eadhed,  afterwards  bishop  of  Lindsey,  and  ultimately  of 
Ripon  ^.  They  had  expected  to  find  a  successor  appointed 
to  Deusdedit  '^  but  were  disappointed.  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  case  with  Wilfrid,  Chad  seems  to  have 
forgotten  that  Boniface  of  Dunwich  was  available  ^^,  for 

*  Bede,  iii,  28  :  '  Virum  sanctum,  niodestum  moribus,'  &c. 
^  Bede,  iv.  3  :  'Naniqne  inter  plura  continentiae,'  &c. 

^  Bede,  iii.  28  :  '  Erat  enim  de  discipulis,'  &c.  above,  p.  161. 

*  Bede,  iv.  3.  Chad  and  Egbert  had  been  'adolescentes  *  in  Ireland 
together.  Now  Egbert  was  born  in  639  ;  see  Bede,  iii.  27,  If  Chad  was 
about  his  age,  he  would  be  only  twenty-six  at  this  time, — below  the  age 
for  a  bishop.     Probably  he  was  some  years  older  than  Egbert. 

5  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  2  :  '  Quem  cum  pater  ejus,' &c. 

"  Bede,  iii.  14  :   '  Et  a  filio  quoque  suo  Alchfrido.* 

'  See  Bishop  Stubbs  on  Cathedral  of  Worcester,  p.  2.  The  inscription 
on  the  Bewcastle  cross,  erected  in  the  first  year  of  Egfrid,  commemorates 
'  Alchfrith,'  asks  prayer  *  for  his  soul '  (this,  Professor  Earle  informs  me, 
is  clearly  the  sense  of  the  clause),  and  names  also  Kyniburga  (his  widow), 
Kyneswith  (her  sister),  and  Wulfhere  '  king  of  Mercians.' 

•*  Comp.  Bede,  iii.  28 ;  iv.  12. 

*  Bede  does  not  imply  that  they  were  unaware  of  Deusdedit's  death 
simply  ;  '  invenerunt  iam  migrasse  .  .  .  et  necduni  alium,*  &c. 

'"  And  so  docs  Bede  himself,  when  he  says,  \\.  28,  that  there  was  then 


i 


by  a  Saxon  and  two  British  bishops.    245 

lie  repaired  to  Wini  of  Winchester,  who  thereupon  took  the  chap.  vir. 
first  step  towards  effecting  a  union  of  the  British  and  Eng- 
lish Churches,  while  at  the  same  time  he  showed  himself 
careful  to  observe  the  requirement  of  the  '  three '  conse- 
crators,  by  obtaining  the  co-operation  ^  of  '  two  bishops  of 
British  race,'  most  probably  from  Cornwall  2,  who,  it  need 
not  be  said,  were  maintainers  of  the  Celtic  Easter, — and 
who  therefore,  by  laying  their  hands  on  the  head  of  the 
new  Northumbrian  bishop,  unintentionally  supplied  the 
party  which  resented  his  appointment  with  an  argument 
against  the  '  regularity '  of  his  consecration  ^.  In  other 
respects,  the  combination  of  agents  in  the  scene  then  wit- 
nessed by  the  Church-people  of  Winchester  was  specially 
interesting  and  appropriate.  A  prelate  consecrated  in  Gaul 
joins  with  himself  two  prelates  of  a  different  rite,  repre- 
senting the  old  Church  of  Alban  and  Restitutus,  of 
Dubricius  and  David,  in  the  consecration  of  one  who  had  sat 
as  a  boy  at  Aidan's  feet,  and  had  but  very  lately,  it  would 
seem,  given  up  the  British  and  Scotic  observances, — and 

no  canonically  ordained  bisliop  in  Britain  except  Wini  :  yet  Boniface  sat 
from  652  to  669  ;  iii.  20  ;  iv.  5. 

*  '  Adsumptis  in  societatem  ordinationis  ; '  Bede,  iii.  28.  The  words 
ignore  that  artificial  theory  which  would  make  the  presiding  bishop  the 
sole  agent  in  the  conveyance  of  the  episcopal  character  so  that  the  assistant 
bishops  were  simply  approving  witnesses,  and  had  no  more  to  do  with 
the  *  collation  *  of  the  episcopal  character  than  the  '■  priests  present '  with 
that  of  the  presbyterate.  The  dominance  of  this  theory  in  the  Roman 
schools  accounts  for  the  strange  fact  that  in  1720  and  1731  one  or  more 
priests  had  been  employed  to  lay  on  hands  with  the  bishop  or  bishops, 
at  the  consecration  of  Roman  bishops  for  Scotland  (Stephen,  Hist.  Scot. 
Ch.  ii.  496,  515).  Against  this  view  see  Martene,  that  the  assistant 
bishops  are  undoubtedly  *  non  tantum  testes,  sed  etiam  cooperatores,'  De 
Ant.  Eccl.  Rit.  ii.  331  :  Lee  on  English  Oi'dinations,  p.  230  ;  Denny  and 
Lacey  de  Hierarch.  Anglic,  p.  3  ff.  ;  Ch.  Qu.  Review  xli.  285.  Comp. 
Hincmar,  Op.  ii.  408,  Ep.  to  Hincmar  of  Laon  :  '  Tuum  est  autem  cum 
aliis  mecum  ordinare  episcopum,  et  litteris  canonicis,  quas  ordinatus  ab 
ordinatoribus  suis  jubetur  accipere,  post  me  in  tuo  loco  subscribere.' 
See  also  Vit.  S.  Anskar.  12,  '  pariter  consecrantibus  ; '  and  Gear's  Eucho- 
logion  Graecorum,  p.  303,  ruv  avyx^'^P^'^^^^^'^'^^^  apxitpiuv^  although  the 
presiding  prelate  is  called  specifically  6  x^^poTovriaas.  Yet  it  must  be 
owned  that  the  '  witness '  theory  is  favoured  by  some  language  in  Gre- 
gory's replies  to  Augustine's  questions. 

*  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  124. 

3  '  Ceaddam  .  .  .  inordinate  ordinavit ;'  Eadmer,  Vit.  Wilf.  c.  12. 


246  Chad^  bishop  of  York. 

CHAP.  VII.  who  was  to  shine  forth,  in  a  brief  but  beautiful  episcopate, 

as  one  of  the  truest  and  purest  saints  of  ancient  England. 
Chad,  This  event  may  probably  be  dated  about  the  middle  of 

York  ^  ^  ^^5  ^'  ^^^  Chad,  on  returning  to  Northumbria,  was  installed 
as  bishop  of  York  ^.  '  He  began  at  once  ^  to  devote  himself 
to  the  maintenance  of  ecclesiastical  truth  and  purity;  to 
practise  humility  and  continence ;  to  give  attention  to  read- 
ing ;  to  go  about  among  towns,  country  districts,  cottages, 
townships,  "  fortified  places,"  in  order  to  preach  the  Gospel, 
not  on  horseback,  but,  after  the  manner  of  the  Apostles, 
on  foot.  For  he  was  one  of  the  pupils  of  Aidan,  and  took 
pains  to  train  his  hearers  to  the  same  conduct  and  character, 
after  Aidan 's  example  and  that  of  his  own  brother  Cedd  ^! 
Meantime  Wilfrid  bore  the  trial  of  finding  the  see  thus 
filled  with  a  moderation  which  could  hardly  have  been 
expected  even  from  a  less  high-spirited  man.  It  was  his 
best  policy  to  accept  facts,  and  to  bide  his  time  ^.  He  did 
so,  and  resumed  his  place  as  abbot  of  Ripon^,  where  among 
his  monks  was  Ceolfrid,  whose  name  was  to  be  so  closely 
linked  to  those  of  Benedict  Biscop  and  of  Bede. 

If  Wilfrid  could  not  fully  appreciate  the  work  which 
bishops  of  Scotic  consecration  had  done  for  Christianity  in 

^  Eddi  says  that  for  three  years  from  his  return  Wilfrid  made  the 
monastery  of  Ripon  his  headquarters  (e.  14),  while  Chad  acted  as  bishop 
of  York.  The  three  years  ended  in  August,  669.  But  Chad  was  already 
at  York  when  Wilfrid  returned. 

^  Bede,  v.  19  :  '  Quo  adhuc  in  transmarinis  partibus,'  &c. 

^  Bede,  iii.  28  :  '  Consecratus  ergo,'  &c.  In  this  chapter,  as  in  one  sen- 
tence of  i.  29,  in  ii.  8,  16,  iii.  7,  &c.,  we  have  *  consecrari.'  Bede's  more 
usual  phrase  is  the  general  term  '  ordinari  ' ;  i.  27,  29  ;  ii.  3,  9  ;  iii.  5,  20, 
21,  &c. 

*  Comp.  Bede,  iii.  5  :  '  Discurrere  ....  pedum  incessu  vectus,'  &c. 

^  Fridegod  expresses  this  in  a  better-sounding  line  than  usual : 
'  Spe  meliore  manet  latebris  contectus  in  illis.* 
See  Richard  of  Hexham,  'placido  vultuet  hilari  pectore,'  De  statu  Hagust. 
Eccl.  6  ;  Eddi  and  Malmesbury,  '  humiliter.' 

^  There  is  no  sort  of  authority  for  saying  that  he  might  and  ought  to 
have  *  entered  on  the  duties  of  his  bishopric  at  Lindisfarne/  leaving  Chad 
to  be  bishop  of  York  (Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  i.  429 ).  He  was  himself  conse- 
crated for  York  (see  above,  p.  241  ;  and  Diet.  Chr.  B.  i.  427,  'Wilfrid  was 
thereupon  raised  to  the  see  of  York ') ;  there  was  then  no  thought  of  divid- 
ing the  diocese  of  Northumbria.  Chad  was  placed  in  the  see  to  which 
Wilfrid  had  been  elected,  and  had  all  Northumbria  under  his  jurisdiction. 
See  above. 


Third  Mission  to  East-Saxons.  247 

South  Britain,  he  must  at  least  have  rejoiced  to  hear,  in  the  chap.  vii. 
course  of  this  year  665,  that  a  bishop  of  that  class  had  once 
more  been  the  instrument  in  a  reconversion  of  East-Saxons. 
It  was  doubtless  Sebbi,  faithful  himself,  with  his  own  Third 
subjects,  to  Christianity,  who  induced  his  over-lord  Wulfhere  J^^^ast^ 
to  send  Jaruman  to  preach  to  Sighere  and  his  people.  This  Saxons. 
was  the  third  mission  to  Essex.  Jaruman,  attended  by 
priests,  one  of  whom  lived  to  tell  the  story  to  Bede  ^  *  went 
about  the  whole  district,'  and  brought  back  the  wanderers 
into  the  right  way  :  '  so  that  they  abandoned  or  destroyed 
their  fanes  and  altars  ^,  reopened  the  churches,  and  gladly 
acknowledged  that  Name  of  Christ  which  they  had  dis- 
owned, desiring  rather  to  die  with  the  assurance  of  rising 
again  in  Him  than  to  live  amid  idols  in  the  filth  of  dis- 
belief;' words  which  intimate  that  the  deadly  sickness 
which  had  scared  them  back  to  idolatry  was  still  raging, 
and  therefore  that  Jaruman  and  his  priests  had  faced  its 
perils  while  winning  back  souls  to  Christ  with  equal  pru- 
dence ^  and  energy.  London  is  not  mentioned  in  this 
account,  but  its  citizens  had  either  retained  their  faith — 
which  may  have  been  acquired  through  Cedd's  work,  even 
if  he  did  not  establish  himself  among  them — or  were  among 
those  who  now  regained  it:  and  we  hear  of  the  see  of 
London  as  associated,  in  666  or  thereabouts,  with  a  grave 
scandal.  Kenwalch  of  Wessex,  with  all  his  sincerity  and 
zeal,  his  admiration  for  men  of  learning,  his  orthodoxy  on 
the  Paschal  question,  and  his  helpful  kindness  to  such  a  man 
as  Benedict  Biscop  *,  was  not,  apparently,  an  easy  prince 
for  bishops  to  deal  with.  He  had  quarrelled  with  Agilbert 
about  dialect ;  he  now,  for  what  cause  we  know  not,  con- 
strained Wini  to  leave  his  kingdom.  The  bishop  took 
refuge  in  Mercia,  and,  as  Bede  says,  with  stern  laconic 
plainness,  'bought    with  a  price   the   see   of   the   city  of 

'  Bede,  iii.  30  :  '  Juxta  quod  mihi  presbyter,  qui  comes  itineris  illi  et 
cooperator  verbi  exstiterat,  referebat ;  erat  enim  religiosus  et  bonus  vir.' 

^  '  Arisque  :  *  comp.  *  arulam,'  contrasted  with  the  Christian  'altare,' 
in  Bede,  ii.  15. 

^  '  Multa  agens  sollertia,'  Bede. 

*  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  4,  says  that  Benedict  *  had  more  than  once  enjoyed 
his  friendship  and  been  assisted  by  his  kindnesses.' 


248  Wilfrid  in  Mercia  and  Kent, 

CHAP.  VII.  London  from  King  Wulfhere  ^/  who  had  established  his 
supremacy  over  the  East-Saxons.  Simony  had  long  been 
a  sore  and  a  disgrace  in  the  Gallic  Church  ^,  within  whose 
limits  Wini  had  been  consecrated ;  but  we  know  no  more 
than  what  Bede  thus  tells  us  of  the  circumstances  under 
which  Wini  got  possession  of  the  see  of  Mellitus. 

Wilfrid  in      If  Jaruman  was,  as  doubtless  he  was,  like-minded  to  the 

i  eicia.  }3is];,ops  of  Lindisfarne,  any  such  unhallowed  trafficking 
between  the  king  and  Wini  must  have  grieved  him  to  the 
heart.  He  survived  his  good  work  in  Essex  for  about  two 
years,  dying  in  667.  Wulfhere  did  not  appoint  a  successor, 
but  requested  Wilfrid  from  time  to  time  to  discharge 
episcopal  functions  in  Mercia  ^  and  gave  him  several  pieces 
of  land  for  the  foundation  of  monasteries — one  of  which, 
that  at  Oundle,  happened  to  be  long  afterwards  the  scene 
of  its  founder's  death.  Wulfhere  ultimately  gave  him 
a  *  place '  at  Lichfield,  where  he  might  establish  himself  as 
bishop  ;  but  Wilfrid's  heart  clung  to  Northumbria,  and  he 
would  not  permanently  bind  himself  to  a  Midland  diocese. 
He  would  only  administer  it  during  the  vacancy,  a  position 
which  he  was  destined  more  than  once  to  occupy  in  later 

Wilfrid  in  life.  Another  such  sphere  of  duty  provided  for  him  during 
these  years  was  Kent.  Invited  by  Egbert,  he  ordained  in 
that  kingdom  many  priests  and  not  a  few  deacons*.  It  is 
interesting  to  combine  the  facts,  that  one  of  these  priests 
was  Putta,  a  man  who  had  a  special  skill  in  chanting, 

^   '  Emit  pretio  ; '  Bede,  iii.  7, 

^  Gregory  of  Tours  says  of  the  first  part  of  the  sixth  century,  '  Jam  tunc 
germen  illud  iniquum  coeperat  fructificare,  ut  sacerdotium  aut  venderetur 
u  regibus,  aut  compararetur  a  clericis ;  *  Vit.  Patr.  6.  3.  See  second 
Council  of  Orleans,  a.  533,  c.  3.  And,  very  late  in  his  own  life,  in  591,  he 
tells  us  that  one  Eusebius  procured  the  see  of  Paris  '  datis  multis  muneri- 
bus ' ;  H.  Fr.  x.  26.  Compare  Gregory  the  Great,  Ep.  v.  53,  55 ;  ix.  106, 
109  ;  xi.  55,  59.  Much  later,  in  650,  the  council  of  Chalon-on-Saone  had 
had  to  forbid  taking  money  for  ordinations  ;  Mansi,  x.  1192. 

■"  Eddi,  14,  15.     Bede  does  not  seem  to  be  aware  of  this  ;  see  iv,  3. 

*  Eddi,  14  ;  Bede,  iv.  2,  '  Ipse  etiam  in  Cantia,'  &c.  '■  Ekbertus  vero  .  .  . 
poscit,  Ordinet  ut  sacros  .  .  .  ministros,'  &c.  ;  Frideg.  418.  When  Bede 
says  that  Wilfrid  was  the  first  English-born  bishop  who  *  catholicum 
Vivendi  moreni  ecclesiis  Anglorum  tradere  didicW  (iv.  2),  we  must  appar- 
ently lay  stress  on  the  last  word,  and  suppose  a  reference  to  what  he  had 
*  learned '  at  Rome. 


Kent. 


Election  of  Wighard,  249 

acquired  from  *  disciples  of  Pope  Gregory  ^ ' ;  and  that  in  ^h^p-  vn. 
Kent  Wilfrid  found,  and  closely  attached  to  himself,  Hsedde, 
or  Eddi,  ecclesiastically  named  Stephen,  who  afterwards 
became  a  noted  choir-master  in  Northumbria,  and  the 
enthusiastic  follower  and  biographer  of  Wilfrid-, — with 
another  well-trained  chanter,  called  iEona  ^.  His  brilliant 
attractiveness  and  lively  versatile  intelligence  drew  round 
him  men  of  all  classes,  including  '  masons,  and  artificers  of 
nearly  every  sort  *,  who  afterwards  accompanied  him  into 
Northumbria.  He  made  use  of  all  opportunities  :  he  could 
throw  himself  into  various  interests,  and,  in  a  sense,  be  '  all 
things  to  all  men.'  Within  the  precincts  of  the  cathedral 
monastery  at  Canterbury,  or  at  SS.  Peter  and  Paul's,  which  , 
lost  its  abbot  Nathanael  by  death  in  667,  he  studied  minutely 
the  Benedictine  rule,  which  he  was  afterwards  the  first  to 
propagate  throughout  the  North-country  ^. 

It  might  have   been    expected   that  the    Kentish   king 
would  think   him   the   very  man    for  the    vacant    arch- 
bishopric.     But   policy,  perhaps,  prevented   such   a   step, 
which  might  have  been  distasteful  to  some  in  Kent,  and 
also    to    some    in    Northumbria.     Egbert    consulted    with  Wiglund 
Oswy  the  '  Bretwalda,'  and   in   some  way  or   other   the  canter-  * 
opinion  of  '  the  Church  of  the  English  race '  in  general  was  ^^"^T- 
ascertained.    The  result  was  the  election  of  Wighard,  '  one 
of    Deusdedit's    clergy,' — '  a   good    man    and    fit    for  the 
episcopate,  very  well  instructed  in  ecclesiastical  discipline 
and  learning  by  Roman  disciples  of  Pope  Gregory  ^,'  still 
surviving  in  Kent.     It  was  resolved  that  he  should  go  to 
Rome,  and  be  consecrated  at  that  fountain-head,  '  that  lie 

^  Bede,  iv,  2,  end.  Compare  the  phrase  as  used  in  v.  20 ;  Maban  the 
chanter  '  had  been  taught  in  Kent  by  successors  of  tiie  disciples  of  Pope 
Gregory.' 

-^  Bede,  iv.  2  :  '  Sed  et  sonos  cantandi,'  &c.  Raine  thinks  the  'Life '  was 
written  soon  after  710.  '  L'ke  so  many  biographers,  he  is  an  enthusiastic 
partisan  ; '  Historians  of  Ch.  York,  i.  pp.  xxxii-xxxv. 

^  Eddi  says  simply,  *  Cum  cantoribus  JEdde  et  Eonan ; '  14. 

*  Eddi,  14  :  '  Caementariis,  omnisque  paene  artis  institoribus/ 

'  Eddi's  words  are,  '  In  regionem  suam  revertens  cum  regula  Sancti 
Benedicti ; '  14.  So  in  47,  Wilfrid  says  that  '  nuUus  prior  ibi  (in  Northum- 
bria) invexW  the  Benedictine  rule;  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  205. 

*  Comp.  Bede,  iii.  29,  iv.  i  ;  Hist.  Abb.  3,    Above,  p.  140. 


250        Pope  Vitalian  endeavours  to  find 

CHAP.  VII.  might  be  able  to  ordain  Catholic  prelates  for  the  Churches 
of  the  English  throughout  all  Britain.'  Wighard  set  forth 
in  667,  and  arrived  safely  in  Rome,  with  royal  letters,  and 

His  death  gifts,  and  gold  and  silver  vessels  not  a  few  ^.  But  after  his 
interview  with  Pope  Vitalian,  '  he  and  nearly  all  of  his 
companions  were  cut  off  by  an  outbreak  of  pestilence,' 
apparently  a  recrudescence  of  the  epidemic  which  had 
killed  St.  Gregory's  predecessor  in  ^90. 

Vitalian's  Thereupon  Vitalian  wrote  to  Oswy  a  letter  ^,  which  Bede 
for  the  most  part  transcribes,  and  which  has  led  to  some 
different  opinions  as  to  his  relations  with  the  English  kings 
and  Churches.  He  returned  thanks  for  the  gifts  sent,  as 
for  offerings  to  St.  Peter,  and  repaid  them,  in  the  Roman 
fashion,  by  relics  ^.  He  exhorted  Oswy  to  follow  the  rule 
of  St.  Peter  as  to  Easter  and  all  other  matters'*.  He 
expressed  his  great  sorrow  for  the  removal  of  Wighard 
from  '  the  light  of  this  world,'  and  intimated  that  he  had 
been  honourably  buried  '  at  the  threshold  of  the  Apostles.' 
He  informed  Oswy  that  he  had  not  as  yet  been  able  to  find 
a  fit  man  for  the  archbishopric  '  according  to  the  tenor  of 
your  letter,'  owing  to  the  great  distance  of  Canterbury  from 
Rome,  which,  it  seems,  deterred  some  from  accepting  the 
office:  but  when  he  could  find  such  a  person,  he  would 

^  Bede,  iv.  i  :  'Missis  pariter  apostolico  papae  donariis,*&c.  So  v.  19; 
sometimes  '  apostolicus  '  (  =  representative  of  St.  Peter)  simply  was  used, 
as  in  Paul's  Life  of  Gregory,  c.  19,  23  ;  Lib.  Diurn.  2  ;  also  *  dominus 
apostolicus,'  cf.  Willibald's  Life  of  Boniface,  s.  20,  and  a  suffrage  in  the 
Roman  Litany.  Oswy  understood,  says  Bede,  that  the  Boman  church  was 
catholic  and  apostolic  ;  iii.  29.     The  Chronicle  gives  the  date. 

^  Bede,  iii.  29.  He  uses  *  Saxonum '  as  equivalent  to  'Anglorum,'  and 
he  seems  to  think  that  Oswy  had  but  lately  been  '  converted  to  the  true 
faith.' 

^  Including  relics  of  St.  Pancras,  with  a  cross,  and  a  *  golden '  key  which 
had  touched  the  chains  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul,  for  queen  Eanfled,  the  report 
of  whose  piety  had  caused  '  the  whole  apostolic  see '  (here  used  for  the 
Roman  church)  to  rejoice  with  Vitalian. 

*  He  combines  St.  Paul  with  St.  Peter.  A  passage  belonging  to  this 
letter,  omitted  by  Bede,  but  discovered  by  Usher,  insists  on  the  duty  of 
keeping  Easter  according  to  the  apostolical  rule  of  the  318  fathers  (of 
Nicaea)  and  the  reckoning  of  the  holy  Cyril  and  Dionysius  :  and  adds  that 
the  apostolic  see  has  not  received  the  '  rule  of  Victor,'  i.  e.  Victorius  of 
Aquitaine  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  112.  See  above,  p.  89.  Gregoiy  of 
Tours  calls  Victorius  *  Victor '  in  H.  Fr.  x.  23. 


a  fit  man  for  the  Archbishopric.        251 

send  him  with  due  instructions,  in  order  that  by  his  oral  chap.  vn. 
teaching  and  by  the  Divine  oracles  he  ^  might  eradicate  all 
tares  from  the  whole  of  the  island ' ;  alluding,  of  course,  to 
the  Celtic  Easter.  What  is  meant  by  '  the  tenor  of  Oswy's 
letter '  %  Vitalian's  phrase  would  imply  that  it  had  con- 
tained, first,  a  request  to  consecrate  Wighard,  the  recognized 
archbishop  elect,  and  then  a  distinct  commission  to  find 
some  other  person,  if  anything  should  happen  to  Wighard^. 
But  such  further  provision  is  not  likely  to  have  been  made 
by  Oswy  or  by  Egbert  ^ :  Bede,  in  his  two  references  to  the 
royal  letter  ^,  does  not  say  that  it  was  actually  made :  he 
says  that  the  pope  described  Theodore  as  'the  teacher' 
whom  Benedict  Biscop's  '  native  land  had  earnestly  sought 
for  * ' ;  and  when  the  archbishop  who  was  at  last  sent  was 
passing  through  Gaul,  his  messengers  described  him  to 
Egbert  as  the  bishop  who  had  been  '  asked  for  ^.'  It  is  not 
unfair  to  suspect  that,  in  the  first  instance,  a  Pope  who  had 
had  ten  years'  experience  ^  would  know  how  to  infer  the 
commission  from  the  request,  with  no  other  warrant  than 
the  pretensions  of  his  see.  The  subsequent  words  of  the 
messengers  just  referred  to  might  be  simply  an  echo  of  this 
characteristic  papal  inference^. 

It  must  be  owned  that  Vitalian  took  great  pains,  and  Hadrian, 
ultimately  made  a  very  wise  choice  ^.     At  first  he  thought 
of  Hadrian,  an  African  by  race,  and  abbot  of  a  monastery 
not  far  from  Naples,  a  man  equally  '  active  and  prudent, 
conversant  with  Scripture  and  all  ecclesiastical  rules,'  and, 

*  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  75,  treats  this  as  '  certain.* 
'  Kemble,  ii.  366. 

^  Bede,  iii.  29,  iv.  i. 

*  '  Quern  sedula  quaesierat  ;'  Hist.  Abb.  3,  i.  e.  such  a  teacher. 

*  *  Quern  petierant  ; '  iv.  i.  Bede  describes  Vitalian  as  taking  counsel, 
'ne  legatariis  obeuntibus,  legatio  religiosa  fidelium  fructu  competente 
careret ; '  Hist.  Abb.  3. 

*  Vitalian  become  pope  July  30,  657. 

'  Kemble,  ii.  366,  and  Martineau,  Ch.  Hist.  p.  85,  suggest  that  Oswy 
and  Egbert  may  have  written  again,  leaving  the  case  absolutely  in  the 
pope's  hands.  Churton,  E.  E.  Ch.  p.  75,  assumes  it.  But  for  this,  accord- 
ing to  the  Chronicle,  there  would  hardly  be  time.  See  Haddan  and 
Stubbs,  iii.  112. 

^  Haddan's  Remains,  p.  3 19.  *  Habito  de  his  consilio,  quaesivit  sedulus,* 
Bede,  v.  i.     'Inito  consilio,'  Hist.  Abb.  3. 


252  Theodore  chosen  for  Canterbury. 

<->£Ai\  VII.  which  was  then  a  rare  attainment,  'a  Greek  as  well  as 
a  Latin  scholar  \'  '  Vitalian  sent  for  him,  and  bade  him 
accept  the  appointment  and  go  to  Britain/  *  I  am  unworthy 
of  it/  said  Hadrian  ^ ;  *  but  I  can  point  out  another  better 
qualified  by  age  and  by  learning/  He  named  Andrew, 
a  monk  from  a  neighbouring  nunnery,  where  he  apparently 
acted  as  chaplain.  But  Andrew,  though  *  deemed  by  all 
his  friends  to  be  worthy  of  the  episcopate,  was  weighed 
down  by  feeble  health ' :  and  Vitalian  again  pressed 
Hadrian  to  consent,  but  he  '  begged  a  respite/  saying,  '  If 
I  had  time,  I  might  find  a  suitable  person/ 

Theodore.  <  There  was  at  that  time  in  Rome  a  monk,  whom  Hadrian 
knew,  and  whose  name  was  Theodore.'  Hadrian  might  be 
called  a  fellow-countryman  of  St.  Cyprian  and  St.  Augustine. 
Theodore  was,  in  the  same  sense,  a  fellow-townsman  of 
St.  Paul,  '  born  at  Tarsus,  a  city  in  Cilicia,'  'well  trained 
alike  in  secular  and  in  sacred  learning,  familiar  both  with 
Latin  and  Greek  literature  ^^  of  high  character  and  of 
venerable  age,  being  sixty-six  3^ears  old.'  It  was  in  the 
November  of  667  that  Hadrian  presented  him  to  Vitalian, 
as  one  able  and  willing,  despite  his  years,  to  undertake  the 
momentous  charge  of  the  see  of  Canterbury.  Vitalian 
consented  to  send  him  to  Britain,  but  on  condition  that 
Hadrian  should  accompany  him— partly  because  he  had 
already  for  several  causes  visited  Gaul,  and  therefore  knew 
most  of  the  journey  which  Theodore  would  have  to  take, 
and  had  '  men  of  his  own '  sufficient  to  form  an  escort ; 
partly  *  in  order  that,  by  acting  as  his  fellow -labourer  in 
teaching,  he  might  keep  careful  watch  to  prevent  Theodore 
from  introducing  anything  contrary  to  faith,  after  the 
manner  of  the  Greeks,  into  the  Church  over  which  he  was 

^  '  Graecae  pariter  et  Latinae  linguae  peritissimus  ; '  Bede,  iv.  i.  Comp. 
iv.  2,  '  Latinam  Graecamque  linguam,'  &c. ;  v.  23,  how  Tobias,  as  a  pupil  of 
Hadrian,  became  as  '  familiar '  with  Greek  and  Latin  as  with  English,  &c. 
For  Hadrian  see  also  Hist.  Abb.  3. 

'  '  How  edifying,'  says  Alban  Butler  (Life  of  Theodore,  Sept.  19),  '  was 
this  contention,  not  to  obtain,  but  to  shun  such  a  dignity  ! ' 

'^  Bede,  iv.  i.  So  Hist.  Abb.  3,  &c.  So  pope  Zacharias  called  him  '  ex 
Graeco  Latinus  ante  philosophus,  et  Athenis  eruditus,'  Ep.  11.  He  was 
born  about  602.  The  schools  of  Athens  had  been  suppressed  in  529  ;  but 
see  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  iv.  926, 


Monothelite  Controversy.  253 

to  preside.'  This  somewhat  mysterious  allusion  is  cleared  chai 
up  when  we  remember  that  the  Monothelite  controversy, 
which  Archbishop  Trench  has  described  as  often  underrated 
by  modem  students,  but  as  really  a  contest  '  for  life  and 
death  '  to  the  Church  \  because  it  involved  the  reality  of 
our  Lord's  voluntary  self-sacrifice,  had  been  troubling 
Christendom  for  more  than  thirty  years :  that  Pope 
Martin  I,  nearly  twenty  j^ears  before,  had  affirmed  the 
doctrine  of  Two  Wills  in  the  One  Christ,  corresponding  to 
His  Two  Natures^,  and  four  or  five  years  later  had  suffered, 
in  that  cause,  the  most  brutal  injustice,  ending  in  exile  and 
death  ^,  at  the  hands  of  a  heterodox  Eastern  Emperor,  who 
had  quite  recently  inflicted  his  presence  upon  Rome,  con- 
strained Vitalian  to  do  him  all  outward  honour,  and 
complied  with  imperial  usage  by  offering  gifts  at  the 
principal  altars,  but  meanly  recouped  himself  by  carrying 
off  the  bronze  tiles  of  the  Pantheon,  which  within  living 
memory  had  been  hallowed  as  a  church  *.  Vitalian  had  no 
mind  to  be  a  confessor  or  martyr;  but  he  wished  to  bar 
out  the  imperial  heresy  wherever  he  could  do  so  without 
personal  risk  ^.  He  had  no  reason,  however,  to  be  ap- 
prehensive of  such  tendencies  in  Hadrian's  nominee^. 
Learned  and  aged  as  he  was,  Theodore  had  never  taken 
holy  orders,  among  which  Rome  had  begun  unduly  to 
reckon  the  subdiaconate.  To  this  office,  then,  he  was  pro- 
moted :  but  as  his  head  was  shaven  bald,  after  the  fashion 
styled  Pauline  '^,    he    had,  as   Bede   gravely    tells    us,    to 

^  Trench's  Huls.  Lect.  p.  214.  For  an  account  of  Monothelitism  (pro- 
perly Monotheletism)  see  Robertson,  Hist.  Ch.  ii.  421  ;  Hefele,  v.  2  ff.  E.  T.; 
Liddon,  Bamp.  Lect.  p.  265  ;  Ottley,  Doctr.  of  Incarn.  ii.  127. 

2  First  Lateran  council,  October,  649.     Hefele,  v.  98  ff. 

'  See  the  account  in  Mansi,  x.  860,  and  Alb.  Butler  for  Nov.  12. 

*  Cf.  Gibbon,  viii.  275.  Bury,  Later  Roman  Empire,  ii.  303,  judges 
Constans  II  more  favourably. 

^  See  Mansi,  xi.  195  fF.,  and  Lo  Quien,  Oriens  Christ,  i.  232.  Vitalian  had 
refused  to  accept  letters  from  Monothelite  patriarchs  of  Constantinople  ; 
and  one  of  them,  after  his  death,  urged  that  his  name  should  be  erased 
from  the  '  diptychs  '  of  their  church. 

^  Theodore's  Orientalism  was  shown,  not  on  dogmatic  points,  but  in  tha 
severity  of  some  of  the  rules  in  his  '  Penitential '  (see  Stevenson's  Chron.  of 
Abingdon,  ii.  p.  Iviii)  ;  and  in  its  references  to  'Greeks,'  &c. 

'   '  The  Greek  monks,'  says  Mabillon,  Ann.  Bened.  i.  493,  '  were  at  that 


254  Consecration  of  Theodore, 

CHAP.  VII.  '  wait  four  months,  until  his  hair  should  be  grown  again, 

and   be   fit   to  receive   the    coronal   tonsure^.'     The   four 

months  came  to  an  end  about  the  middle  of  March,  668, 

and  Theodore's  head  could  then  assume  the  aspect  to  which 

the  zealots  for  Roman  ceremonial, — Bede  himself,  we  must 

say,  included, — attached  some  importance:  he  was  presented, 

Consecra-   at  last,  to  Vitalian,  who  consecrated  him  with  his  own 

Theodore    hands,  praying,  in  the  Roman  form  ^,  that  '  whatever  of 

for  Canter-  excellence  had  of  old  time  been  symbolized  by  the  p^old  and 

bury.  .  .  .    , 

gems  and  varied  colours  of  the  Aaronic  vestments  might 
shine  forth,'  in  this  new  member  of  the  Christian  high 
priesthood,  'through  brightness  of  character  and  of  action : ' 
that  in  him  *  might  abound  constancy  of  faith,  purity  of 
love,  sincerity  in  following  after  peace ' :  that  the  Most 
High  '  Author  of  all  dignities  might  give  him  the  episcopal 
chair  to  rule  His  church  and  people,'  and  *  might  be  Himself 
his  authority,  his  firmness,  and  his  power.'  This  memor- 
able consecration,  which  was  apparently  the  ultimate  stock 
of  the  episcopate  of  the  Church  of  England,  took  place  on 
the  26th  of  March,  the  fifth  Sunday  in  Lent,  668. 

Yet  two  months  more  were  spent  by  Theodore  in  Rome. 
At  length,  on  the  27th  of  May,  he  set  forth  with  Hadrian, 
and  with  an  Englishman  signally  fitted  to  assist  him  on 
his  journey.  This  was  Benedict  Biscop,  who,  having  made 
his  second  visit  to  Rome  in  665,  and  after  a  few  months 
retired  to  the  isle  of  Lerins,  and  taken  the  tonsure  and 
vows  of  a  monk,  had  revisited  Rome  in  667,  and  was  now 
requested  by  Vitalian,  who  appreciated  his  religious  earnest- 
ness and  energy,  '  to  lay  aside  the  pilgrimage  which  he  had 

time  entirely  shaven,  in  imitation,  as  they  thought,  of  St.  James,  the 
Lord's  brother,  and  of  the  apostle  Paul.'  See  Smith's  Bede,  pp.  705,  715, 
on  Germanus,  patriarch  of  Constantinople  at  a  later  date,  who  had  the 
whole  of  his  head  shaven. 

^  Bede,  iv.  i  :  '  Donee  ei  coma  cresceret,  quo  in  coronam  tonderi  posset.' 
2  Greg.  Sacram.,  Muratori,  Lit.  Rom.  Vet.  ii.  357.  The  preceding  words 
are  very  remarkable  :  '•  Illius  namque  sacerdotii  anterioris  habitus  nostrae 
mentis  ornatus  est ;  et  pontificalem  gloriam  non  jam  nobis  honor  commendat 
vestium,  sed  splendor  animarum.*  This  is  among  the  Roman  elements  of 
the  *  Gelasian  '  sacramentary  (ed.  Wilson,  p.  151),  and  is  found  also  in  the 
*  Leonine,'  which  Duchesne  considers  to  be  a  purely  Roman  compilation 
of  about  A.  D.  508.     Murat.  i.  422,  625. 


His  prolonged  stay  in  Gaul.  255 

undertaken  for  Christ's  sake  '  to  the  tombs  of  the  Apostles,  chap.  vii. 
and,  '  with  an  eye  to  a  yet  higher  advantage,'  return  home- 
wards as  guide  and  interpreter  to  his  country's  long-desired 
archbishop ^  'Benedict  did  as  he  was  commanded.'  But 
further  delays  had  to  be  endured  when  the  party  arrived 
at  Aries.  Ebroin,  *  the  last  great  mayor  of  the  palace  of 
Neustria  and  Burgundy  ^,'  to  whom,  as  we  have  seen,  has 
been  attributed  the  execution  of  Archbishop  Aunemund  ^ 
and  who  scrupled  at  no  extremities  in  support  of  the  weak 
royalty  as  against  'the  wild  anarchy  of  the  chiefs*,' 
imagined  apparently  that  the  travellers  were  politically 
dangerous,  and  obliged  Archbishop  John  of  Aries  to  detain^ 
them  until  his  pleasure  should  be  known.  When  in  the 
autumn  they  were  allowed  to  depart,  Theodore  proceeded 
to  Paris,  where  Agilbert,  now  settled  there  as  bishop, 
entertained  him  '  kindly  and  for  a  considerable  time.' 
Meanwhile  Hadrian  paid  visits  to  old  friends,  Emmo  arch- 
bishop of  Sens,  and  Faro  the  aged  bishop  of  Meaux:  as 
monk  and  abbot,  he  would  be  specially  attracted  towards 
prelates  one  of  whom  had  given  charters  to  monasteries  ^, 
and  the  other  had  built  a  'suburban  monastery'  where  any 
foreigners  were  welcome  guests  '^.  These  long  visits  were 
not  causeless  loiterings ;  '  winter  was  at  hand,  and  obliged 
them  to  remain  quiet  wherever  they  could  ^.'  But  when 
King  Egbert  was  informed  by  trusty  messengers  that  his 
archbishop  was  now  in  the  realm  of  the  Franks,  he  sent  his 
reeve  ^  Redf rid  to  bring  him  home.  Ebroin  gave  his  licence 
in  regard  to  Theodore,  but  detained  Hadrian  for  some  time 
longer,  suspecting  that  he  was  an  envoy  from  the  new 
Emperor  Constantine  IV  to  '  the  kings  of  Britain,'  hostile 

^  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  3. 

=*  Guizot,  Hist.  Fr.  c.  9.     See  above,  p.  220. 

^  See  his  after- pre ceedings  in  regard  to  bishop  Leodegar  or  St.  Leger, 
October,  678.     We  shall  see  further  on  how  he  acted  in  regard  to  Wilfrid. 

*  Kitchin,  Hist.  Fr,  i.  95. 
'  Bede,  iv.  i. 

•  Mabillon,  Ann.  Bened.  i.  448,  450. 

'  Mabillon,  i.  343.     Faro,  or  Burgundofaro,  died  about  672  ;  ib.  509. 

*  Bede,  iv.  i  :  ^  Coegerat  enim  eos  imminens  hiems,'  &c. 

•  *  Praefectum.'      Comp.   iii.    14,    'praefectum   suum   Ediluinum,'  the 
slayer  of  St.  Oswin;  and  Ep.  Egb.  7  ;  Vit.  Cuthb.  15.     Cp.  above,  p.  139. 


256        Theodore's  arrival  in  Canterbury. 

CHAP.  VII.  to  the  dynasty  which  he  both  served  and  ruled  ^  When 
Theodore,  escorted  by  Redfrid,  arrived  at  Quentavic,  or 
Etaples,  in  Ponthieu,  a  further  brief  delay  was  caused  by 
an  illness  which  attacked  him :  '  but  as  soon  as  he  had 
begun  to  get  better,'  he  crossed  the  Channel,  and  so  '  arrived 
at  his  church,'  as  Bede  says  with  reference  to  these  long 
trials  of  English  patience,  '  in  the  second  year  of  his 
consecration.' 

Arrival  of  That  was  a  great  day  in  Canterbury,  the  second  Sunday 
after  Pentecost,  May  27,  669  '^,  when  Theodore  took  his 
seat  on  the  throne  of  Augustine,  at  the  western  end  of  the 
'  basilica  of  the  Holy  Saviour  Christ  '\'  It  was  seventy-two 
years  after  the  arrival  of  the  first  archbishop :  and  now  the 
seventh,  though  far  on  in  life,  had  twenty-one  years 
reserved  for  his  wonderful  energies  as  a  ruler  and  organizer, 
which  brought,  says  Bede,  '  such  an  amount  of  spiritual 
benefit  to  the  Churches  of  the  English  as  they  had  never 
before  received  *.'  One  of  his  first  acts  was  to  commit  the 
vacant  abbacy  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul  to  Benedict  Biscop  ^, 
who  held  it  for  two  years,  until  Hadrian,  who  had  arrived 
in  Britain  soon  after  Theodore,  was  made  abbot,  and  so 
provided,  according  to  the  special  directions  of  *  the 
apostolic  lord  ^ '  at  Theodore's  departure,  '  with  a  place  in 
the  diocese  of  Canterbury  where  he  could  live  conveniently 
with  his  own  attendants,'  and  keep  an  unsuspected  watch 
over  the  '  Greek '  archbishop's  orthodoxy. 

Visitation       As  soon  as  Hadrian  arrived,  Theodore  took  him  as  his 

dore.  ^^     companion  and  '  fellow-labourer '  in  a  general  visitation  of 

^  Bede,  iv  i  :  '  Legationem  aliqnam  imperatoris,'  &c.  '  When  he  had 
ascertained  that  Hadrian  did  not  hold,  and  never  had  held,  any  such  com- 
mission he  let  him  go  free,'  &c.  Constantino  IV,  'the  Bearded'  (see 
Gibbon,,vi,  76),  had  succeeded  his  father  '  Constans'  in  September,  668. 

^  Bede,  iv,  2  :  *  Pervenit  autem  Theodorus,'  &c.  See  Hook,  Archbishops, 
i.  151  :  '  The  grand  old  man,'  &c. 

^  See  above,  p.  61. 

*  Bede,  v.  8  :  '  Ut  enim  breviter  dicam,'  &c. 

'  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  3.  Elmham  ignores  this  passage,  when  he  says  that 
Benedict  Biscop  was  not  abbot  of  St.  Augustine's  :  tit.  8.  He  adds  that 
Hadrian  received  the  abbacy  from  Theodore,  not  as  archbishop,  but  as 
legate  of  the  pope  ;  a  very  *  Augustinian '  touch.  On  the  relation  between 
Hadrian  and  Biscop  see  Bp.  Browne,  Lessons,  &c.,  p.  no. 

'  Bede,  iv.  i. 


His  Character,  257 

what  was  now  to  be  deemed  his  province,  in  order  '  to  chap.  vn. 
consecrate  bishops  in  fitting  places/  and  ^  disseminate  the 
rule  of  right  living  and  the  Catholic  mode  of  celebrating 
Easter^.'  The  archbishop  was  thoroughly  bent  on  doing 
his  work,  and,  for  that  end,  putting  in  force  his  authority. 
He  had,  it  must  be  owned,  something  of  the  autocrat  about 
him  2 :  but  he  had  been  specially  appointed  to  a  task  which 
would  require  the  energies  of  a  resolute  and  commanding 
will.  He  had  to  make  himself  felt  as  the  rightful  chief 
pastor  of  the  several  English  Churches,  and  to  mould  and 
compress  them  into  unity  under  a  more  than  merely 
nominal  head.  He  probably  felt  that,  at  his  years,  he 
must  work  hard  at  his  task,  during  what  might  remain  to 
him  of  the  '  twelve  hours '  of  his  day ;  he  had  less  time 
than  a  younger  man  for  gently  feeling  his  way  and 
gradually  developing  his  plans ;  and  the  sudden  rise  to  great 
favour  while  he  was  elderly,  but  still  vigorous,  had  made 
him  impatient  of  anything  like  opposition.  He  was  con- 
scious of  the  gifts  of  a  born  ruler :  one  does  not  think  of 
him  as  of  a  saint,  or  a  man  who,  because  he  '  loved,'  in 
St.  Augustine's  exquisite  phrase,  could  'do  whatever  he 
liked  ^,' — whose  administrative  success  was  the  fruit  of 
a  genial  nature,  that  gained  obedience  by  the  mere  fact 
of  evoking  sympathy.  This  man  of  Tarsus  was  not  like 
him  whose  heart  was  so  tenderly  '  enlarged  * '  towards  all 
who  were  under  his  authority :  and  the  idea  of  discipline 
and  obedience  had  received  in  the  continental  Church- 
system  so  ample  a  development,  the  hierarchy  was  so  much 
regarded  as  an  organ  of  governmental  action,  and  so  little, 
comparatively,  as  a  presentation  to  mankind  of  a  Divine 
Pastor  in  His  various  operations  of  love, — that  one  expects 
to  find  in  the  character  of  a  bishop  brought  up  in  it  a  certain 
hard  authoritativeness,  which  reminds  one  of  the  old  Roman 
magistracy  rather  than  of  St.  Chrysostom  or  St.  Paul.  But 
whatever  Theodore  was,  whether  we  think  him  deficient 

^  Bede,  iv.  2 :   *  Ritum  paschae  .  .  .  disseminabat .  .  .  ordinabat  locis  op- 
portunis  episcopos,'  &c.  ^  See  Bede,  iv.  6,  28. 

^  '  Dilige,  et  quod  vis  fac  ; '  In  Epist.  Joan.  Tiact.  7.  8. 
*  2  Cor.  vi.  II. 

S 


258  Reception  of  Theodore, 

CHAP.  VII.  or  not  in  some  characteristics  of  a  shepherd  of  souls,  we 
must  recognize  in  him  a  man  of  vast  practical  ability,  and 
sincere  determination  to  do  his  best  for  the  Church.  And 
not  only  can  we  appreciate  what  he  did  for  England  during 
an  unexpectedly  long  episcopate,  but  we  can  understand 
how  at  its  commencement  he  'was  received  as  a  public 
blessing  by  the  kings  and  people,  and  was  the  first  arch- 
bishop,' Bede  says,  'to  whom  all  England  submitted^.' 
Great  stress  was  naturally  laid  on  his  having  been  sent 
directly  from  Rome,  and  consecrated  by  the  Pope's  own 
hands  and  voice  '^ :  but  this  advantage  was  enhanced  by 
the  force  of  his  own  personality,  so  that,  on  all  accounts, 
his  arrival  forms  an  epoch  -l 

*  Johnson,  Engl.  Can.  i.  86;  comp.  Bede,  iv.  2  :  'Isque  primus  erat  in 
archiepiscopis  cui  omnis  Anglofum  ecclesia  wawMs  dare  consentiret.' 

'  See  Cone.  Herutf.,  in  Bede,  iv.  5:  '  ab  apostolica  sede  destinatus.' 
So  Eddi,  15,  '■  unde  emissus  venerat ; '  ib.  29,  *  illuc  ab  apostolica  sede  olim 
direct! ; '  ib.  30,  'ab  hac  apostolieae  summitatis  sede  directus  est  ; '  ib.  45, 
*  ab  apostolica  sede  missi.'  '  Birigo  '  is  frequently  used  in  ecclesiastical 
Latin  for  '  mitto '  :  e.  g.  by  Leo  the  Great,  Ep.  28.  6  ;  cp.  Ep.  30.  2. 

^  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  77.  Bede  says  of  his  first  years,  'Never  were 
there  happier  times  since  the  Angles  came  to  Britain,'  and  characteris- 
tically associates  with  the  power  wielded  by  '  Christian  kings '  and  the 
religious  earnestness  of  the  people  a  fact  which  to  him,  as  a  typical 
student,  would  be  no  small  constituent  of  national  happiness  :  *  All  who 
wished  for  instruction  in  sacred  studies  had  masters  at  hand  to  teach 
them  ; '  and  cp.  Bede,  v.  8. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

When  Theodore  began  his  visitation,  probably  about 
midsummer  in  669,  there  were  but  two  English  bishoprics 
not  vacant ;  and  of  these,  one,  that  of  Dunwich,  was  vacated 
by  the  death  of  Boniface  in  that  same  year  ^  In  his  place 
Theodore  consecrated  Bisi,  '  a  man,'  says  Bede,  '  of  much 
holiness  and  piety.'  The  see  of  Rochester  was  filled  by 
Putta  ^,  whom  Wilfrid  had  ordained  priest ;  but  this  appoint- 
ment was  not  altogether  successful,  for  Putta,  though  a 
skilful  Church  musician,  had  no  aptitude  for  affairs,  and, 
as  we  shall  see,  could  not  stand  up  against  difficulties. 
Proceeding  to  the  North-country,  he  found  that  '  for  Theodore 
three  years '  Chad  had  been  '  ruling  the  Church  of  York ' 
in  a  manner  which  Bede  calls  'sublime^.'  But  nothing 
escaped  the  keen  eye  of  the  archbishop  *  :  from  his  rigidly 
Roman  point  of  view,  he  noted  a  flaw  in  Chad's  episcopal 
position.  'You  have  not  been  consecrated  in  a  regular 
manner  ^ ; ' — he  referred,  apparently,  to  what  might  be 
represented  as  the  intrusion  of  Chad  into  a  see  for  which 
provision  had  been  already  made  by  Wilfrid's  Frankish 
consecration,  and  also  to  the  fact  that  two  of  Chad's  conse- 
crators  were  Britons,  observers  of  the  non-Catholic  Easter, 
and  as  such  condemned  by  '  the  statutes  of  the  Apostolic 
see,'  which  Theodore  carried  with  him.  Wilfrid's  bio- 
grapher cannot  but  admire  Chad  as  '  an  admirable  teacher,' 
and  more  as  'a  true  servant  of  God,  and  a  very  meek 
man  ^,'  although  he  probably  exaggerates  his  self-humilia- 

^  For  Boniface  sat  seventeen  years  from  652 ;  Bede,  iv.  5. 

2  Theodore  probably  did  not  invite  Wini's  assistance  ;  above,  p.  247. 

^  Bede,  v.  19,  in  sense  of  *  excellent.' 

*  '  Perlustrans  omnia,'  Bede,  iv.  2. 

*  *  Non  fuisse  rite  ordinatum,'  ib. 

*  Eddi,  14,  15.    A  writer  in  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  (art.  '  Ceadda ')  thinks 

S  2 


26o  Theodore  and  Chad. 

CHAP.  VIII.  tion.  According  to  Bede's  simple  account,  Chad  answered 
in  a  very  humble  voice  ^,  '  If  you  are  persuaded  that  I 
received  the  episcopate  in  an  irregular  manner,  I  willingl}^ 
retire  from  the  office ;  for  I  never  thought  myself  worthy 
of  it  - :  indeed,  it  was  only  for  obedience'  sake,  when  com- 
manded to  undertake  it,  that  I  consented,  though  unworthy.' 
The  command  that  he  referred  to  must  have  been  that  of 
Oswy  and  the  other  authorities  concerned.  It  is  to  be 
observed  that  according  to  this  representation  of  his  words, 
he  did  not  confess,  as  a  matter  of  personal  conviction,  that 
he  had  done  wrong  ^,  or  allowed  himself  to  be  wrongly  con- 
secrated ;  he  simply  announced  that  if  Theodore  felt  sure 
of  this,  he  would  not  defend  his  position.  Theodore  was 
touched  and  softened  *  by  this  utter  absence  of  self-asser- 
tion. '  No,'  he  said ;  '  you  are  not  bound  to  lay  aside  the 
episcopate.'  But  Chad,  it  seems,  insisted  on  retiring  to  his 
monastery  at  Lastingham^,  and  left  York  accordingly, 
whereupon  Wilfrid  naturally  took  possession  of  the  see.  But 
very  shortly  afterwards  an  arrangement  suggested  itself, 
which  might  secure  for  the  Church  the  episcopal  services 
of  Chad  as  well  as  of  Wilfrid.  The  Mercian  king  desired 
Theodore  to  supply  him  and  his  people  with  a  bishop  ^ 

that  the  objection  was  a  mere  'pretext,'  devised  to  get  rid  of  Chad  and 
make  room  for  Wilfrid.     This  is  not  at  all  required  by  the  facts. 

^  'Voce  humillima,'  Bede,  iv.  2. 

^  This  partly  reminds  us  of  the  famous  speech  ascribed  by  a  '  legend  '  to 
St.  Wulstan  of  Worcester,  vv^hich  was  possibly  modelled  upon  it.  See 
Freeman,  iv,  376. 

2  As  Eddi  would  represent  it,  '  Peccatum,  .  .  .  poenitentia  humili  secun- 
dum judicium  episcoporum  confessus  emendavit.'  There  were  no  other 
bishops  in  the  North,  at  the  time,  beside  Theodore,  and,  doubtless, 
Wilfrid,  who  would  have  returned  from  Kent  to  Northumbria. 

*  Malmesbury  wrongly  ascribes  this  feeling,  not  to  Theodore,  but  to 
Wilfrid. 

*  Bede,  iv.  3,  v.  19.  I  follow  Raine's  order  of  events  :  it  seems  most 
likely  that  the  'consummating'  of  Chad's  consecration  took  place,  not,  as 
Eadmer  says,  before  his  retirement  to  Lastingham,  but  when  he  was  sum- 
moned back  to  be  bishop  of  the  Mercians.  See  Fast.  Ebor.  i.  51.  All 
happened,  evidently,  within  a  few  weeks.  Richard  of  Hexham  says  that 
'  Chad  was  deposed,  and  returned  to  Lastingham  '  ;  X  Script.  293. 

*  Bede,  iv,  3.  Eddi  says  that  Wulfhere  had  previously  given  Wilfrid 
a  sort  of  commission  to  find  another  bishop  for  Mercia  ;  15.  This  does 
not  agree  with  Bede  ;  and  we  cannot  rely  on  Eddi's  accuracy. 


Question  of  Chad's  consecration.         261 

Theodore  instantly  saw  his  way.  '  He  refused  to  conse-  chap,  yiii. 
crate  a  new  bishop  for  the  Mercians,  but  asked  King  Oswy 
to  give  them  Chad  : ' — an  expression  which  implies  that  the 
Northumbrian  king's  consent  was  necessary  for  the  settle- 
ment of  one  of  his  subjects  as  bishop  of  a  '  South-humbrian ' 
Church.  Chad  had  so  many  associations  with  former 
Church-work  in  Mercia,  as  the  brother  of  Cedd,  and  as 
connected  with  Lindisfarne,  that  he  would  be  specially 
fitted  to  succeed  Jaruman  :  and  any  irregularities  in  his 
consecration  might  be  corrected  fcy  Theodore  himself. 
This  was  done :  '  Theodore  completed  his  consecration 
afresh,  in  the  Catholic  manner.'  What  does  this  imply? 
Eddi  tells  us  that  the  bishops  'fully  ordained  Chad 
through  all  the  ecclesiastical  grades  ^!  If  the  latter  state- 
ment were  literally  accepted,  it  would  imply  that  not  only 
Chad's  consecration,  but  his  previous  ordination,  must 
have    been     regarded    as    null    on    the    ground    of    the 

*  schismatic '  character  of  the  prelates  who  performed  them. 
Undoubtedly  great  authorities  had  pronounced  such  con- 
secration or  ordination  to  be  void  ^.  But  this  was  not 
universally  ruled  ^  and  Wini  at  least  was  no  schismatic  ^ ; 
so  that  a  real  reiteration  of  Chad's  orders,  including  the 
episcopate,  would  have  constituted  one  of  those  peremptory 
judgements  which  ignored  the  distinction,  so  obvious  to  all 

^  Eddi,  15.     Eadmer  (c.  17)  follows  Bede,  Malmesbury  follows  Eddi. 

^  As  to  schismatics,  the  natural  sense  of  the  Nicene  Council's  decisions 
respecting  Novatians  (can.  8)  and  Meletians  (Ep.  Synod,  in  Soc.  i.  9) 
points  in  this  direction.  See  Morinus,  De  Sacr.  Ordin.  par.  3.  p.  120  ; 
Routh,  Scr.  Op.  i.  416.  Bingham,  indeed,  interprets  the  two  decisions 
diversely,  b.  iv.  c.  7.  s.  7,  and  s.  8  ;  and  Tillemont,  vi.  678,  814,  under- 
stands both  as  referring,  not  to  reordination,  but  to  a  reconciliatory  and 
confirmatory  benediction. 

^  See  Bingham,  iv.  7.  7,  8,  that  there  was  no  uniform  rule  in  the  ancient 
Church  as  to  this  question  ;  e.  g.  the  Donatist  bishops  were  not  recon- 
secrated, nor  were  those  who  had  been  consecrated  by  the  heretical 
Bonosus,  nor  who  came  over  from  Macedonianism.  He  suggests  that  the 
'  benedictio  impositae  manus,'  ordered  by  the  first  Council  of  Orleans  in 
511  (Mansi,  viii.  353'  incase  of  converted  Arian  clerics,  'perhaps  does  not 
mean  a  new  ordination,  but  only  a  reconciliatory  imposition  of  hands.' 
But   see  Hefele  on  the  other  side,   Councils,   iv.   90,   E.  T.     Theodore's 

*  Penitential '  orders  that  '  one  who  has  been  ordained  by  heretics  should 
be  ordained  over  again,  if  blameless.' 

*  Consecration  by  one  bishop  was  deemed  valid.     Above,  p.  66. 


262  Chad  resumes  work 

CHAP.  VIII.  modern  churchmen,  between  what  is  irregular  and  what  is 
invalid^.  If,  however,  we  simply  follow  Bede's  account, 
and  illustrate  it  by  an  extant  decision  ascribed  to 
Theodore^,  we  may  suppose  that  the  archbishop  intended 
simply  to  add  whatever  forms  might  have  been  omitted,  to 
supply  canonical  defects,  and  then  to  rehabilitate  Chad  for 
all  purposes  of  episcopal  jurisdiction.  If  Theodore  was 
over-punctilious  in  this  matter,  his  next  act  exhibits  him 
in  a  very  pleasing  and  kindly  light.  He  had  evidently 
taken  a  strong  liking  to  Chad;  and  hearing  that  it  had 
been  the  latter's  habit  ^  to  go  about  his  diocese  on  foot, 
'  he  ordered  him  to  ride  whenever  he  had  a  longer  circuit 
than  usual  before  him.'  Chad  objected,  out  of  '  zealous 
love  of  pious  labour,'  and  probably  with  remembrances  of 
his  old  master  Aidan.  But  the  archbishop,  in  this  as  in 
graver  matters,  was  masterful  when  he  met  with  any 
resistance ;  and  he  saw  that  Chad's  notions  of  humility 
and  mortification  were  imperilling  his  practical  efficiency. 
'  You  shall  ride,'  he  said ;  and  with  his  own  aged  hands 
he  lifted  Chad  bodily  on  horseback,  '  because,'  says  Bede 
with  charming  simplicity,  '  he  had  ascertained  him  to  be 
a  holy  man.' 
Chad,  It  must  have  been  in  the  September  of  669  *  that  Chad 

Liclifield    ^^^^'^  resumed  episcopal  work,  and  settled  himself  in  that 
same  Lichfield  where  Wulf  here  had  once  desired  to  establish 

*  Cp.  Hefele,  ii.  359,  E.  T.  See  the  case  of  Formosus'  ordinations, 
recklessly  'annulled'  by  Stephen  VI. 

*  Theodore's  Penitential,  ii.  9.  i  (Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  197) :  *  Those 
who  have  been  ordained  by  bishops  of  Scots  or  Britons,  who  are  not 
catholic  in  the  matter  of  Pasch  or  tonsure,  have  not  been  united  to  the 
Church,  sed  iterum  a  catholico  episcopo  manus  impositione  confirmentur.' 
But  these  words  describe  a  case  beyond  Chad's.  Bede  evidently  regards 
Chad  as  having  been  a  real  bishop  during  his  government  of  the  church 
of  York.  Compare  the  Roman  legend  about  Kentigern,  that  the  pope 
supplied  'quae  deerant  consecration!  ejus,*  Vit.  Kent.  c.  27,  cp.  c.  11.  See 
Hook,  i.  155  ;  "Warren,  Lit.  Rit.  Celt.  Ch.  p.  68.  It  has  been  ruled  by 
Roman  authorities  that,  if  the  final  imposition  of  hands,  with  '  Accipe 
Spiritum  Sanctum,'  has  been  omitted  at  a  priest's  ordination,  it  must  be 
supplied  later:  Ch.  Qu.  Review,  x.  199. 

^  Bede,  iv.  2  ;  compare  iii.  28,  *  non  equitando,'  &c. 

*  For  Chad  held  the  Mercian  see  two  and  a  half  years  ;  and  he  died  in 
March,  672. 


as  bishop  of  Lichfield,  263 

Wilfrid,  but  where  no  Mercian  bishop,  as  yet,  had  '  held  his  chap.  vnr. 
see.'  There  he  found,  or  built,  a  church  of  St.  Mary,  to  the 
east  of  the  site  now  occupied  by  '  the  fair  cathedral  ^ ' ;  and 
also,  near  it,  erected  a  house  to  be  his  dwelling  '  when  he 
was  not  at  work  in  the  ministry  of  the  Word  ^.'  Seven  or 
eight  brethren  used  to  share  at  such  times  his  studies  and 
devotions ;  but  outside  the  walls  was  to  be  seen,  engaged  in 
manual  labour,  a  man  who  had  a  remarkable  history  of  his 
own.  This  was  Ouini,  or  Owin,  who  had  been  bom  and 
bred  in  East-Anglia,  and  had  come  thence  to  Northumbria, 
in  660,  as  steward  of  the  household  to  th«  princess  Ethel- 
dred,  when  after  the  death  of  her  first  husband,  Tonbert 
the  '  Gyrvian,'  she  was  given  in  marriage  to  Egfrid  son  of 
Oswy^  The  enthusiastic  devotion  of  the  East- Anglian 
court  had  taken  hold  of  its  trusted  servant.  One  day  he 
had  appeared  in  a  rustic  dress,  with  axe  and  hatchet,  like 
a  common  woodman,  at  the  door  of  Lastingham.  He  had 
quitted  his  high  office,  '  left  all  that  he  had  '^,'  and  begged 
for  admission  into  the  monastery.  Study  was  not  in  his 
line,  but  he  offered  to  devote  himself  to  field-work  :  and  he 
ultimately  followed  his  abbot  and  bishop  to  Lichfield. 
Wulf here  also  endowed  the  bishopric  with  fifty  '  hydes ' 
of  land  for  a  monastery  '  in  a  place  called  Ad  Barvse,  that 
is,  At  the  Grove,  in  the  province  of  Lindsey,'  supposed  to 
be  Barrow  in  Lincolnshire,  where  '  traces '  of  Chad's  dis- 
cipline existed  when  Bede  wrote  ^.  The  work  of  so  large 
a  diocese,  even  with  the  aid  of  a  horse,  must  have  tasked 
all   his   energies.      Bede   tells   us  much   of   his   profound 

^  Marmion,  vi.  36. 

"^  At  *  Chadstowe,'  now  Stowe,  at  the  end  of '  the  Pool.* 
^  The  date  is  given  by  Florence,  and  agrees  with  Thomas  of  Ely's  account 
of  St.  Etheldred.  '  Owin '  may  possibly  have  had  the  administration  of 
the  Isle  of  Ely  ;  Vit.  Etheldr.  c.  8,  in  Act.  SS.  Benedict,  ii.  745.  Thomas 
calls  Owin  a  worthy  *  custos  et  provisor '  to  Etheldred.  He  is  said  to  have 
lived  at  Winford,  near  Hadenham  ;  Benthnm,  Hist,  of  Ely,  p.  51.  The 
monumental  inscription  upon  the  tomb,  *  \^  Lucem  tuam  Ovino  da,  Deus, 
et  requiem,  Amen,*  is  '  perhaps  one  of  the  most  venerable  monuments  of 
Saxon  antiquity';  Palgrave,  p.  cciii.  *  It  long  served  as  a  horse-block,' 
but  is  now  in  the  south  aisle  of  Ely  cathedral. 

*  *  Pura  intentione  supernae  retribution  is,'  says  Bede,  iv.  3. 

*  Bede,  1.  c.     He  was  thus  bishop  *  Merciorum  simul  et  Lindisfarorum.' 


264  Chad's  piety 

CHAP.  VIII.  religious  awe,  on  the  authority  of  Trumbert,  a  monk  '  who 
had  been  brought  up  in  his  monastery  and  under  his  rule/ 
and  who  was  '  one  of  those  who   instructed '  the  future 
historian  '  in  the  Scriptures  ^'     According  to  his  account, 
Chad  represented,  very  markedly,  that  type  of  piety  which 
distinguished  the  great  ascetics,  and  the  most  earnest  of  the 
early  Teutonic  Christians,  and  fixed  their  thoughts  with 
such  intensity  on  the  awful  side  of  their  religion.     '  He  was 
ever  subject  to  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  and  in  all  his  actions 
mindful  of  his  end  2.'     Everything  which  seemed  to  him 
a  voice  from  God  was  taken  as  a  loud  call  to  self-scrutiny 
and  contrition,  a  warning  to  prepare  for  the  stroke  that 
was   still  withheld'^.     If  a  high  wind   swept   across   the 
moors  at  Lastingham, — or,  we  may  add,  around  the  little 
cathedral  at  Lichfield, — he  at  once  gave  up  his  reading,  and 
implored  the  Divine  mercy  for  mankind.     If  it  increased, 
he  would  shut  his  book,  and  prostrate  himself  in  prayer. 
If  it  rose  to  a  storm,  with  rain  or  thunder  and  lightning, 
he  would   repair   to   the  church,  and  give  himself  'with 
a  fixed  mind '  to  prayer  and  the  recitation  of  psalms,  until 
the   weather   cleared   up.      If  questioned   about   this,   he 
would  quote  the  Psalmist's  words,  'The  Lord  thundered 
out  of  heaven/  and  urge  the  duty  of  preparing  by  a  serious 
repentance  for  'that  tremendous  time  when  the  heavens 
and  earth  should  be  on  fire  ^  and  the  Lord  would  come  in 
the   clouds  with  great  power  and  majesty,  to  judge  the 
quick  and  the  dead.'     Yet  with  all  this  dread  of  Divine 
judgements,  Chad,  in  his  own  words,  had  '  a  continual  love 
and  desire  of  the  heavenly  rewards  ^ ' :    and  '  it  was  no 
wonder,'  says  Bede,  'if  he  rejoiced  to  behold  the  day  of 
death,  or  rather  the  day  of  the  Lord,  seeing  he  had   so 

^  Bede,  I.e.:  '  Namque  inter  plura,'  &c. 

^  '  Novissimorum  suorum.*     Ecclus.  vii.  36  (40,  Vulg.). 

^  '•  Discussis  penetralibus  cordis  nostri  .  .  .  fe'&lliciti  ne  unquam  percuti 
mereamur.' 

*  '  Coelis  ac  terris  ardentibus,'  alluding  to  2  Peter  iii.  12. 

5  To  him,  as  to  Bede,  there  was  no  difficulty  in  harmonizing  such  texts 
as  Heb.  x.  31  and  i  John  iv.  8.  Compare  the  account  of  Bede's  own 
death  :  'He  sang  the  sentence,  '^Horrendum  est  incidere  in  manus  Dei 
viventis,"  but  also  quoted  St.  Ambrose,  ''  Nee  mori  timeo,  quia  bonum 
Pominum  habemus." ' 


and  death,  265 

anxiously  prepared  for  it  until  it  actually  came  ^.'  It  came  chap.  vm. 
by  an  access  of  the  often-recurring  pestilence,  which  had 
proved  fatal  to  many  members  of  the  church  of  Lichfield 
before  it  attacked  the  bishop  himself  2.  It  was  said  that 
Owin  ^,  at  his  work  in  the  fields  near  the  '  mansion/  heard 
a  sweet  sound,  as  of  angelic  melody,  come  from  the  south- 
east and  gradually  reach  and  fill  the  oratory  where  Chad 
was,  until  after  half  an  hour  it  rose  again  heavenward. 
While  pondering  what  it  might  mean,  he  saw  Chad  open 
the  window  of  the  oratory,  and  clap  his  hands,  as  he  was 
wont  to  do  by  way  of  summoning  any  one  who  was  outside. 
He  entered :  the  bishop  bade  him  call '  the  seven,'  his  special 
companions,  and  come  with  them.  All  came :  he  bade  them 
'  cherish  love  and  peace  among  each  other,  and  towards  all 
the  faithful,'  and  adhere  to  all '  the  rules  of  discipline  which 
they  had  learned  of  him  or  seen  him  observe,  or  found  in 
the  acts  or  sayings  of  the  fathers  who  preceded  him.'  '  My 
time  is  very  near :  that  lovable  guest  ^  who  used  to  visit 
our  brethren  has  come  to  me  to-day.  Go  back  to  the 
church,  and  bid  the  brethren  commend  to  the  Lord  my 
departure,  and  also  remember  to  prepare  for  their  own  ^, — 
the  hour  of  which  they  know  not.'  And  then,  the  story 
proceeds,  after  they  had  received  his  blessing  and  departed 
in  great  sorrow,  he  told  Owin  privately  that  the  voices 
which  he  had  heard  were  those  of  '  angels  come  to  summon 
him  to  those  heavenly  rewards  which  he  had  ever  loved 
and  longed  for,  and  that  they  would  return  in  seven  days 
and  take  him  thither  with  them.'  He  was  speedily  taken 
ill,  and  on  the  seventh  day,  Tuesday  the  2nd  of  March,  672, 
after  receiving  his  last  Communion,  he  closed  an  episcopate 
which,  alike  in  Northumbria  and  in  Mercia,  deserved  the 

^  Bede,  iv.  3 :  *  Non  autem  minim  si  diem  mortis,  vel  potius  diem 
Domini,'  &c.     Comp.  Bede,  iv.  24,  on  Caedmon,  and  iv.  28,  on  Cuthbert. 

^  Bede,  iv.  3  :  'Supervenit  namque  clades,'  &c. 

^  Bede  does  not  say  through  whom  this  came  to  him.  He  considers 
Owin  to  have  been  '  dignus  cui  Dominus  speclaliter  sua  revelaret  arcana, 
dlgnus  cui  fidem  narranti  audientes  aceoramodarent.' 

*  Meaning,  the  angel  of  death,     Cp.  a  story  in  Bede,  iv.  9. 

'  '  Vigils '  are  here  mentioned  :  Aidan  had  been  diligent  alike  '  in  study 
and  in  vigils,'  Bede,  iii.  17  ;  and  cp.  iv.  25,  '  vigiliis  Sanctis . . .  salutaribus.' 


266  Eg/rid^  king  of  Northumbria. 

CHAP.  VIII.  epithet  of  '  most  glorious  ^'  and  procured  for  the  name  of 
St.  Chad  of  Lichtield  a  high  place  among  the  saints  of  his 
country.  He  was  buried  in  St.  Mary's  church,  but  after- 
wards removed  to  the  later  church  of  St.  Peter  ^ :  and  he 
was  succeeded  by  one  who  had  long  served  him  as  deacon, 
a  '  good  and  modest  man  '  named  Winf rid  ^. 

The  desirableness  of  treating  his  Mercian  life  as  a  unity 
has  led  us  to  anticipate  the  order  of  events.  Changes  had 
taken  place  in  Northumbria,  in  Wessex,  and  in  Kent,  while 

Death  of  Chad  was  at  work  in  Mercia  and  in  Lindsey.  Oswy's  reign, 
which  Bede  significantly  characterizes  as  '  most  laborious  *,' 
was  drawing  near  its  end  when  he  '  gave '  Chad  to  Wulf here. 
He  was  then  in  his  fifty-eighth  year, '  weighed  down,'  says 
Bede,  'by  illness,'  but  not  thinking  it  fatal,  and  making 
plans,  in  case  he  should  get  better,  for  gratifying  his  late- 
grown  admiration  for  Roman  usages  by  going  to  Rome, 
and  ending  his  days  among  its  '  sacred  places ' :  he  even 
begged  Wilfrid  to  be  ready  to  act  as  his  guide,  and  promised 
him  '  no  small  gift  of  money  ^.'  This  was  not  to  be.  He  died 
on  the  15th  of  February,  670,  according  to  Bede's  text,  but 
apparently  we  should  read  671  ^,  and  was  buried  in  the 
minster  of  Whitby,  where  also  the  bones  of  Edwin  were 
deposited.  His  crown  passed  to  his  son  Egfrid,  who  was 
now  twenty-five  '^,  and  whom  Bede  in  one  passage  describes 
as  '  most  pious  ^ '  on  account  of  his  friendship  for  Benedict 
Biscop,  while  Eddi  dilates  on  his  religious  excellence,  his 
gentleness  among  his  own  people,  his  bravery  and  success 
in  war, — for  instance,  in  his  suppression  of  a  Pictish  revolt, 
when  he  '  filled  two  rivers  with  the  corpses  of  the  dead  ^ '  \ 

'   '  Gloriosissime,'  applied  to  liis  Mercian  episcopate  ;  Bede,  iv.  3. 

"^  Bede  describes  his  shrine  as  '■  a  wooden  structure  in  the  form  of 
a  small  house,  with  a  hole  through  which  part  of  his  "  dust "  could  be 
taken  out.' 

2  Bede,  1,  c.  :  '  In  cujus  locum,'  &c. 

*  Bede,  iii.  14.  s  Bede,  iv.  5. 

^  See  Pluramer  on  Bede,  iv.  5.  For  his  burial  see  Elmham,  Hist.  Mon. 
S.  Ang.  p.  188. 

'  See  Bede,  iv.  26,  that  in  685  he  was  in  his  fortieth  year. 

«  Hist.  Abb.  I. 

'  Eddi,  19  ;  adding  that  the  pursuers  thus  actually  crossed  the  river 
'siccis  pedibus.'    The  rivers  were  probably  the  Forth  and  Teith,  or  the 


Wilfrid's  church-building,  267 

and,  we  may  add,  in  another  campaign  with  Wulfhere,  by  chap.  vm. 
which  he  recovered  Lindsey^.  At  the  beginning  of  his 
reign  he  lived  on  friendly  terms  with  Wilfrid,  who  was 
then  at  the  height  of  his  prosperity  and  popularity.  We  Wilfrid, 
seem  to  see  him  going  about  his  diocese  with  the  energy  of  York, 
one  bom  to  *  repair  the  breaches '  and  '  build  the  old  waste 
places  2  ' :  at  York  he  '  shuddered  ^ '  to  see  his  cathedral 
fallen  into  a  miserable  dilapidation,  which  implies  some 
negligence  on  the  part  of  Chad;  for  otherwise  Wilfrid 
would  not  have  found  the  roofs  decaying,  the  windows 
devoid  of  glass,  and  the  inner  walls  blotched  with  rain  and 
haunted  by  birds.  He  repaired  the  roofs,  covered  them 
with  lead,  glazed  the  windows,  cleaned  the  walls  with  lime, 
decked  the  altar  with  new  furniture*,  and  obtained  new 
property  for  the  church.  At  his  beloved  Ripon  he  reared 
'a  basilica  of  polished  stone,  towering  to  a  great  height, 
with  pillars  of  varied  form,  and  arched  vaults,  and  winding 
cloisters  ^ ' ;  and  invited  the  king,  his  brother  Alfwin,  and 
a  number  of  sub-kings,  reeves,  and  abbots  to  attend  the 
dedication  'in  honour  of  the  chief  of  the  Apostles.'      On 

Tay  and  Earn  ;  Skene,  Celt.  Scotl.  1.  261.     The  Pictish  leader  was  named 
Bernhacth. 

^  Eddi,  20;  Bede,  iv.  12:  'superato  .  .  .  et  fugato  Wulfhere/  Malmes- 
bury,  *  partem  provinciarum  Northanimbrorum  regi  cesserit ; '  G.  P.  iii. 
100.     See  above,  pp.  177,  207. 

"^  This  was  a  duty  prescribed  to  bishops ;  e.  g.  4th  C.  of  Toledo,  c.  36 
(a.  d.  633)  ;  '  Episcopum  per  cunctas  dioeceses  parochiasque  suas  per 
singulos  annos  ire  oportet,  ut  exquirat  quo  una  quaeque  basilica  in 
reparatione  sui  indigeat ; '  Mansi,  x.  629.  Here  both  '  dioeceses  *  and 
'  parochiae  '  are  used  for  districts  within  a  diocese  in  our  sense  of  the 
word ;  cf.  Diet.  Chr.  Antiq.  i.  559. 

^  '  Horruit  spiritus  ejus,'  Eddi,  15.     The  windows,  says  Malmesbury, 
had  been  covered  with  thin  linen  or  trellis-work.     Fridegod  says, 
'  Humida  contrito  stillabant  assere  tecta ; 

pluviae  quacunque  vagantur, 

Pendula  discissis  fluitant  laquearia  tignis.' 
See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  263  ;  Freeman,  v.  609. 

*  *  Lymphis  perfunditur  absis, 

Albanturque  suis  lustrata  altaria  peplis.'     Frideg.  451, 

'  Eddi,  16  ;  and  Malmesbury,  G.  Pontif.  1.  c,  'porticuum  inflexu.'  This 
church  stood  some  2cxj  yards  from  the  site  of  the  present  cathedral ;  and 
the  crypt  under  the  latter  must  belong  to  another  church,  built  either  by 
Wilfrid,  or  by  Eadhed,  bishop  in  679.  An  opening  in  it,  communicating 
with  a  passage,  is  called  '  St.  Wilfrid's  Needle.' 


268  Wilfrid's  church-building 

HAP.  VIII.  such  a  day  he  was  truly  in  his  element ;  and  we  may 
imagine  the  interest  with  which  the  function  of  which  he 
was  the  centre  would  be  watched  by  a  little  boy  then 
being  trained  up  in  the  monastery,  afterwards  the  great 
missionary  archbishop  Willibrord  ^.  The  altar,  was  elabor- 
ately blessed,  vested  in  purple  and  cloth  of  gold,  the  paten 
and  chalice  hallowed^,  the  Eucharist  celebrated:  then  Wilfrid, 
in  front  of  the  altar,  with  his  face  towards  the  people^, 
recited  a  list  of  the  lands  recently  or  previously  bestowed 
upon  him,  and  also  of  the  sanctuaries  once  held  by  the 
British  Church  *.  Then  came  a  public  feast,  kept  up  with 
barbaric  extravagance  for  three  days  and  nights, — a  strange 
concession,  we  may  think,  to  the  coarse  tastes  of  the 
Yorkshiremen.  Wilfrid  added  to  his  other  '  gifts  for 
the  adornment  of  God's  house '  a  large  golden  cross  ^,  and 
a  copy  of  the  Gospels  in  four  volumes,  written  in  letters 
of  gold  on  purple  vellum,  all  contained  in  a  case  ^  made  of 
gold  and  jewels, — a  treasure  without  parallel  in  Eddi's 
experience,  which  was  long  preserved  in  Ripon  minster. 
At  Hexham,  also,  on  land  given  by  the  pious  Queen  Ethel- 
dred  *^,  he  built,  in  honour  of  St.  Andrew,  a  church  of  great 
length  and  height,  with  'manifold   columns  and  porches, 

^  Act.  SS.  Bened.  saec.  iii.  i.  603. 

"^  The  Gallic  rite  of  dedicating  an  altar  was  elaborate.  In  the  next 
century,  according  to  the  use  of  York,  holy  water  and  oil  were  poured 
on  the  new  altar,  with  several  prayers  :  its  slab  was  blessed,  its  cover- 
ings put  on,  and  the  vessels,  placed  on  it,  were  hallowed.  Egb.  Pontif. 
p.  39  ff.      Cp.  Duchesne,  Origines,  p.  391  ff. 

3  'Stans  .  .  .  ante  altare,  conversus  ad  populum,'  Eddi,  16. 

*  *Quas  reges  .  .  .  illi  dederunt.'  Eddi  names  four  districts,  one  being 
near  the  Kibble.  Raine  suggests  that  the  other  three,  '  Gaedyne,  Dunu- 
tinga,  Caetlaevum,'  are  Gilling,  the  vale  of  the  Duddon,  and  Cartmel 
(Hist.  Ch.  York,  i.  26).  An  extract  from  Peter  of  Blois'  lost  Life  of 
Wilfrid,  in  Mon.  Anglic,  ii.  133,  names  three  districts,  Rible,  Hasmun- 
desham  (Amounderness),  Marchesiae  (the  Mersey  district^  all  in  Lanca- 
shire. For  the  claim  on  old  British  Church-prOperty,  see  Raine  in  Diet. 
Ch.  Biogr.  iv.  1180. 

'  See  his  epitaph  at  Ripon,  Bede,  v.  19  :  '  Sublime  crucis  radiante 
metallo  .  .  .  trophaeum.*  See  Bishop  Browne,  Lessons  from  E.  E.  Ch. 
Hist.  p.  112,  and  cp.  above,  p.  52. 

^  *  Bibliothecam,'  Eddi.     So  the  epitaph,  Bede,  1.  c,  *  Ac  thecam,'  &c. 

'  The  property  had  come  to  Etheldred  as  a  marriage  gift ;  Rich.  Hexh. 
de  statu  Hagust.  Eccl.  c.  7,  X  Script.  294. 


i 


I 


and  pastoral  activity.  269 

a  complication  of  ascending  and  descending  passages  ^'  chap.  vm. 
And  at  this  day,  the  visitor  who  looks  round  the  exquisite 
minster  of  Hexham  will  find  nothing  worthier  of  his 
attention  than  the  small  crypt  of  Roman  masonry,  with 
two  Roman  inscriptions  built  up  in  its  walls,  on  the  western 
side  of  the  transept :  descending  into  it,  he  enters  the  only 
remaining  part  of  Wilfrid's  church,  '  the  building  deep 
under  ground  formed  of  admirably  carved  stone,'  which 
Eddi  includes  in  his  description  of  a  structure  that,  as  far 
as  he  knew,  had  no  equal  '  on  this  side  of  the  Alps.'  The 
bishop  also  exerted  himself  for  the  improvement  of  Divine 
service :  he  set  Eddi  and  iEona  to  carry  on  the  special 
work  of  teaching  Church-song,  or,  as  Eddi  makes  him 
express  it  ^,  of  '  training  choirs  to  sing  responsively,  accord- 
ing to  the  custom  of  the  primitive  Church.'  But  if  Wilfrid 
was  munificent  as  a  church-builder,  and  active  as  a  promoter 
of  choral  worship,  he  was  also  indefatigable  as  a  chief  pastor : 
he  is  depicted  as  riding  about  incessantly  to  baptize  and 
confirm  ^,  holding  ordinations  ^,  forming  new  church  settle- 
ments, and  amid  all  this  whirl  of  activities  retaining  his 
habits   of   ascetic   devotion.     Of   these  we   are   told   that 

^  Eddi,  22.  Kichard  of  Hexham  expands  this  description  :  '  Parietes  .  . . 
columnis  suffultus,  et  tribus  tabulatis  distinctos,  .  .  .  erexit.  Ipsos  .  .  .  et 
capitella  columnarum  .  .  .  et  arcum  sanctuarii,  historiis  et  imaginibup,  et 
variis  caelaturarum  figuris  ex  lapide  prominentibus,  et  picturarum  et 
coloruni  grata  varietate  .  .  .  decoravit.  Ipsum  quoque  corpus  ecclesiae 
appenticiis  et  porticibus  undique  circumcinxit.'  In  the  stone  staircases 
and  '  deambulatoria '  and  winding  passages  up  and  down,  many  men 
could  stand  without  being  seen  by  any  one  in  the  church.  The  cloisters 
had  oratories  and  altars  of  their  own.  The  minster  was  enriched  with 
splendid  '  ornaments,'  vestments,  and  books  :  and  the  '  court  *  (atrium) 
was  surrounded  by  a  strong  thick  wall.  Altocjether,  this  minster  '  sur- 
passed all  the  nine  monasteries'  of  which  Wilfrid  was  '  father  and  patron,* 
and  '  all  others  in  England '  ;  X  Script.  290, 

2  Eddi,  47.  See  Benedict.  Greg.  Op.  iii.  650.  Comp.  Joan.  Diac.  Vit. 
Greg.  ii.  6,  on  Gregory's  compilation  of  antiphons,  and  his  '  schola  can- 
torum.*     Above,  p.  140. 

^  Eddi,  18.  See  the  story  of  the  Ripon  monk  surnamed  '  Bishop's  son,' 
whom  he  had  baptized  and  claimed  for  'God's  service.' 

*  'In  omnibus  locis  presbyteros  et  diacones  sibi  adjuvantes  abundanter 
ordinabat ; '  Eddi,  21.  Here  we  vsee  the  germ  of  a  parochial  system  :  so  in 
Bede,  iii.  22,  we  find  bishop  Cedd  ordaining  clergy  '  per  loca.'  Yet  in  734 
Bede  had  to  exhort  bishop  Egbert  to  ordain  priests  for  the  several  villages  ; 
Ep.  to  Egb.  3. 


270         Grandeur  of  Wilfrid's  position. 

CHAP.  VIII.  neither  in  summer  nor  in  winter  did  he  drink  more  at  his 
meal  than  the  contents  of  one  small  cup,  and  that  he 
persisted  in  washing  his  whole  body  in  cold  water  before 
going  to  bed,  until,  when  he  was  quite  an  old  man,  the 
Pope  directed  him  to  abstain  from  so  severe  a  discipline  ^ 
At  the  same  time,  no  austerity  of  manner  was  discernible 
in  him :  he  made  himself  '  dear  and  lovable '  to  people 
of  all  races  ^,  and  his  gracious  geniality,  the  outcome  of 
a  genuinely  kind  heart,  was  like  sunshine  to  all  who  felt 
its  presence.  'Abstinence,'  in  him,  did  not  generate  'pride,' 
— so  says  his  biographer  with  much  significance.  He  was 
the  typical  man  of  Church  and  realm ;  the  king  admired 
and  relied  on  him ;  the  queen  confided  to  him  her  longings 
for  a  monastic  life,  which  her  husband  at  last  reluctantly 
permitted  her  to  gratify  by  taking  the  veil  from  Wilfrid's 
hands  in  Ebba's  convent  at  Coldingham ;  abbots  and 
abbesses  made  him  their  heir  or  their  trustee,  and  nobles 
committed  their  sons  to  the  great  prelate  who  had  been 
a  thane's  firstborn,  that  under  his  eye  they  might  be 
prepared  for  'God's  service,  if  they  chose  it,'  or  if,  when 
grown  up,  they  preferred  a  secular  life,  might  be  '  presented 
as  soldiers  to  the  king  ^.'  He  played  an  important  part  in 
Frankish  politics  by  inviting  Dagobert,  the  young  heir  of 
Austrasia,  from  his  place  of  exile  in  Ireland,  and  sending 
him  over  in  princely  state,  to  ascend  the  throne  of  his 
father  *.  This  is  the  picture  of  Wilfrid  in  the  splendours 
of  a  well-deserved  ascendency  ^ :  we  shall  see  ere  long  how 
the  unique  brilliancy  of  his  position  contributed  to  provoke 
a  great  vicissitude,  which  did  but  bring  into  fuller  light 
the  real  nobleness  of  a  princely  and  Christian  soul. 
Benedict  The  companion  of  his  first  journey  in  Gaul  had,  as  we 
Biscop.  \^Q^YQ  seen,  made  three  visits  to  Rome,  before  the  year  671, 
when   he   resigned   the   abbacy  of  Canterbury,  again   re- 

1  Eddi,  21. 

'^  Eddi,  1.  c.  *  Inflatur  nullo,  Jesu  moderamine,  typho  ; '  Frideg.  476. 

'  They  were  his  gesiths  or  retainers ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  176. 

*  Eddi,  28.  Dagobert  II  was  son  of  Sigebert  II.  He  was  born  in  652, 
and  sent  into  Ireland  on  his  father's  death.  He  reigned  from  674  to  679, 
when  he  was  murdered. 

«  See  Raine,  Historians  of  Church  of  York,  i.  p.  xxvii. 


School  at  Canterbury.  271 

pairing  to  the  '  threshold  of  the  Apostles/  and  '  brought  chap.  vm. 
back  not  a  few  books  of  sacred  learning  of  all  kinds,  which 
he  had  either  bought  or  received  as  gifts  from  friends^.' 
Returning  by  Vienne,  he  there  took  possession  of  other 
books  which  friends  in  that  district  had  at  his  request 
procured  for  him.  When  he  was  again  in  Northumbria, 
he  conversed  with  the  king,  went  through  the  whole  story 
of  his  life,  Mid  not  conceal '  his  monastic  fervour,  explained 
all  that  he  had  learned  at  Rome  or  elsewhere  on  matters 
monastic  or  ecclesiastical,  and  exhibited  his  store  of  manu- 
scripts and  of  relics;  altogether  impressing  Egfrid  so 
strongly  that  he  received  a  royal  grant  of  seventy  '  hydes,' 
in  order  to  found  a  monastery  in  honour  of  'the  first 
pastor  of  the  Church,' — a  design  executed,  some  time  later, 
at  Wearmouth. 

Such  a  zeal  for  ecclesiastical  literature  as  Benedict  Biscop  School  at 

Canter- 
had  was  united  in  his  successor  Hadrian,  and  in  Theodore  bury. 

himself,  who  was  popularly  called  '  the  Philosopher,'  with 
a  love  of  learning  much  wider  in  its  range,  and  kindred 
to  that  spirit  which  had  made  the  great  Alexandrian 
teachers  employ  the  existing  curriculum  of  secular  studies 
as  distinctly  capable  of  serving  the  cause  of  Divine  truth  2. 
Hadrian,  with  the  archbishop's  hearty  approval,  founded 
at  Canterbury  a  school  in  which  religious  training  was 
combined  with  all  other  learning  accessible  at  the  time.  As 
we  have  seen,  Canterbury  had  a  school  in  the  early  days  of 
the  archbishopric,  which  served  as  a  model  for  that  of  Felix 
at  Dunwich  ^ :  but  now  '  a  crowd  of  pupils  was  assembled*,' 
and  'streams  of  sound  learning'  of  all  sorts,  sacred  and 
secular,  'flowed  daily  for  the  watering  of  their  minds;' 
so  that  Hadrian,  and  even  the  archbishop  in  person, — so 
marvellous  was  the  old  man's  versatility  and  energy, — 
'  delivered  to  their  hearers  the  rules  of  ecclesiastical  arith- 
metic' (i.e.  for  the  calculation  of  Church  seasons),  of 
astronomy,   of    music,   and    even   of  medicine^,   side    by 

»'  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  4. 

"  Euseb.  vi.  18  ;  Greg.  Thaumat.  Panegyr.  in  Origenem.     Comp.  S.  Aug. 
de  Doctr.  Chr.  ii.  40 ;  Socrates,  H.  E.  iii.  16. 
»  Bede,  iii.  ^ ;  above,  p.  143.  *  Bede,  iv.  2. 

•  See  Bede,   v.    3,    for    Theodore's    opinion    on    bleeding.      And   the 


272  Monasttcism  in  Kent. 

CHAP.  viir.  side  with  '  the  volumes  of  sacred  letters  I'  Among  these 
hearers  were  John,  famous  as  'St.  John  of  Beverley/  bishop 
successively  of  Hexham  and  York ;  Aldhelm,  afterwards 
abbot  of  Malmesbury  and  bishop  of  Sherborne ;  Oftfor, 
bishop  of  Worcester  ^,  Tobias  of  Rochester  ^ ;  Albinus,  the 
successor  of  Hadrian,  who  understood  Greek  fairly,  and 
Latin  thoroughly,  and  to  whom  we  mainly  owe  it  that 
Bede  undertook  his  great  work  * :  and,  when  Bede  wrote, 
there  were  others  living  who  had  studied  under  Hadrian, 
and  who  'knew  Greek  and  Latin  as  well  as  they  knew 
their  own  tongue  wherein  they  were  born^.'  This  great 
school  became  the  prototype  of  the  yet  more  famous  school 
of  York  in  the  next  century,  which,  when  presided  over  by 
Albert,  afterwards  archbishop,  dealt  with  grammar,  rhetoric, 
metre,  astronomy,  physics, — and  out  of  which  arose  the 
illustrious  Alcuin^. 
Monasti-  Monasticism,  also,  received  some  impulse  in  Kent  at  this 
Kent.  time.  Egbert,  in  the  year  of  Theodore's  arrival,  had  given 
the  royal  abode  at  Reculver,  whither  Ethelbert  is  said  to 
have  retired  when  he  settled  Augustine  at  Canterbury, 
'  to  Bass,  the  mass-priest,  to  build  a  minster,' — so  says  the 
Chronicle.  And  in  or  about  the  next  year,  a  tragedy  of 
royal  jealousy  and  suspicion  produced  a  remarkable  peni- 
tential foundation  :  Egbert,  we  are  told"^,  was  so  far  swayed 
by  a  thane  bearing  the  ominous  name  of  Thunor  as  not 
effectively  to  forbid  the  murder  of  his  young  cousins 
Ethelred  and  Ethelbert,  sons  of  his  uncle  Ermenred,  and 
brothers  of  Ermenburga  or  Domneva,  the  pious  wife  of  the 
pious  Merewald,  son  of  Penda  and  sub-king  of  the  West- 

'  Penitential  of  Theodore '  contains  a  curious  medical  dictum:  'leporem 
comedere  .  .  .  bonum  est  pro  desinteria,'  ii.  11.  5.  Cf.  Aldhelm,  Ep.  3,  for 
a  quaint  picture  of  Theodore  showing  some  conceited  Irish  pupils  how- 
superficial  was  their  knowledge  of  grammar  and  chronology,  until  they 
retired  in  confusion. 

^  *  Apicum.'     Cp  Bede,  Ep.  ad  Egb.  i,  and  iii.  8. 

2  Bede,  iv.  23,  *  De  medio  nunc  dicamus.'  ^  Bede,  v.  23. 

*  Bede,  v.  20  ;  and  Praef.,  *  Auctor  ante  omnes,'  &c. 

'  Bede,  iv.  2  ;  Green,  Making  of  Engl.  p.  335. 

^  See  Alcuin,  de  Pontif.  Ebor.  1431  ff.  ;  Raine,  Fast.  Ebor.  i.  loi. 

'  For  the  legend,  *  to  which,'  says  Lappenberg,  i.  246,  '  history  will  not 
refuse  a  space,'  see  Simeon  of  Durham,  Hist.  Reg.  2-5 ;  Elmham,  tit.  7. 


I 


Lot  here  of  Winchester.  2-]^ 

Mercians.  Legend  was  diffuse  on  the  circumstances  which  chap.  vm. 
struck  Egbert  with  compunction  :  the  result  was  visible  in 
the  erection  of  the  nunnery  of  Minster,  in  Thanet,  on  land  * 
given  by  the  king  to  Ermenburga  as  a  *  wer-gild  '  or  satisfac- 
tion for  her  brothers'  innocent  blood.  Theodore  consecrated 
her  as  abbess  ^,  and  she  was  succeeded  by  her  daughter 
Mildred,  who  became  conspicuous  among  the  female  saints 
of  the  Old-English  calendar  ^. 

It  was  in  the  same  year  670  that  Theodore  went,  for  a  Lothere, 
much  more  important  function,  to  the  West-Saxon  capital.  oTwFn- 
There  had  been  no  bishop  of  Winchester  or  Dorchester  Chester, 
since  the  departure  of  Wini  in  666 ;  and  Kenwalch,  regret- 
ting his  breach  with  Agilbert,  sent  messengers  to  request 
him  to  return.  But  Agilbert,  now  bishop  of  Paris,  naturally 
answered  that  he  was  bound  to  his  present  charge*.  'How- 
ever,' said  he,  '  there  is  my  nephew  Lothere,  a  presbyter, 
whom  I  think  very  well  fitted  to  be  a  bishop :  if  the  king 
will  receive  him  to  my  old  place,  I  am  willing  that  he 
should  go.'  The  proposal  was  accepted :  a  West-Saxon 
'  gemot/  which  Bede,  with  a  lax  use  of  the  term,  refers  to 
as  a  '  synod  ^,'  received  Lothere  with  all  honour ;  and  the 
archbishop  consecrated  him  in  his  own  church  of  Winchester^, 
which  five  years  before  had  been  the  scene  of  Chad's  very 
different  consecration.  Kenwalch  closed  his  chequered, 
but  on  the  whole  very  honourable  life,  two  years  after- 
wards ;  and  his  widow  Sexburga,  a  woman  of  remarkable 
talents,  succeeded  in  maintaining  herself  as  queen  regnant 


^  As  much  land,  said  the  story,  as  'cerva  quam  nutrierat  una  die  per- 
agraret'  (Sim.).  The  king  followed  the  hind  ;  Thunor  sneered,  and  the 
earth  swallowed  him!  The  spot  was  called  'Thunor's  ''law'"  or 
<  Thunor's  mound  '  (cf.  p.  175).     Bede  alludes  to  wergilds  in  iv.  21. 

'-*  Thorn  says  that  Mildred  was  the  first  abbess  ;  X  Script.  1907. 

^  Every  one,  for  instance,  who  passes  up  *  Brasenose-lane  *  traverses 
ground  belonging  of  old  to  a  church  named  after  the  canonized  grand- 
daughter of  Penda,  and  three  columns  of  its  crypt  remain  under  the 
common-room  of  Lincoln  College.  For  St.  Mildred  see  Alban  Butler, 
Feb.  20.  Her  father  Merewald  founded  a  convent  at  Leominster  ;  her 
sister  Milburga  became  abbess  of  Wenlock.  He  had  another  sister, 
Mildgith,  and  a  brother  Merewine.  *  Bede,  iii.  7. 

*  '  Ex  synodica  sanctione.'     Cp,  Murat.  Lit.  Rom.  ii.  189. 

^  According  to  canons,  e.  g.  fourth  Council  of  Orleans,  c.  5. 

T 


274  Council  of  Hertford. 

CHAP.  VIII.  for  a  year^,  until  in  674,  Esc  win,  according  to  the  Chronicle, 
became  king  of  Wessex,  or,  properly  speaking,  became 
chief  among  those  petty  kings  whom  Bede  represents  as 
dividing  Wessex  between  them  for  '  about  ten  years '  after 
,the  death  of  Kenwalch  ^. 

Death  of        Another  change  of   rulers  took  place    in    Kent,    when 

Egbert.  Egbert  died  in  the  July  of  673  ^,  and  was  succeeded  by  his 
brother  Lothere,  the  third  month  of  whose  reign  was 
distinguished  by  an  event  which  forms  a  landmark;  for 
Theodore,  already  secure  in  his  majestic  supremacy,  and  prac- 

Council  of  tically  independent  of  royal  support,  held  the  first  English 
•  provincial  Council,  on  the  24th  of  September,  at 'Herutford' 
or  Hertford'',  a  place  probably  chosen  as  fairly  accessible, 
being  on  the  border  of  South-east  Mercia  and  of  Essex. 

Provincial  The  synod  of  a  province,  according  to  Nicene  rules  ^, 
expressing,  as  they  did,  the  mind  of  the  whole  Church 
upon  the  subject,  was  a  necessary  part  of  its  organization. 
It  was  to  meet  twice  a  year,  and  to  settle  all  disputes,  and 
generally  all  matters,  which  affected  the  province  as  a  unity. 
A  similar  provision  was  made  by  one  of  the  '  Apostolical ' 
canons,  which  referred  to  the  synods  thus  held  'the  doctrines 
of  religion,  and  the  ecclesiastical  disputes  which  may  arise^'; 
and  'the  Council  of  the  Dedication'  at  Antioch,  in  341 
repeatedly  enforces  the  supreme  judicial  authority  of 
a  provincial  synod,  when  fully  constituted  under  the 
presidency  of  the  metropolitan  '^.  The  Council  of  Chalce- 
don^  found  that  the   holding  of  'the   provincial  synods 

^  Chron.  a.  672  ;  Malmesbury,  G.  Keg.  i.  32. 

^  Bede,  iv.  12:  *  Acceperunt  sub-reguli  regnumgentis,'&c.  See  Stubbs, 
Const.  Hist.  i.  171.  The  Chronicler,  Florence,  and  Ethelwerd  call  Escwin 
king  of  the  West-Saxons.  He  was  of  another  branch  of  the  house  of  Cerdic. 
On  the  extension  of  West-Saxon  territory  through  Kenwalch's  victories, 
see  Freeman,  Engl.  Towns  and  Distr.  pp.  83,  137. 

^  Bede,  iv.  5.  *  In  Alfred's  version,  '  Heortford.' 

*  Nicene  can.  5.  Compare  Euseb,  Vit.  Const,  i.  51,  as  to  Licinius'  sup- 
pression of  synods  :  "'AWcu?  '^ap  ov  hvvarbv  rd  fjifydXa  tSjv  (TKf/xfxdrav  ^  Sid. 
avvolojv  KaropOuaaadai.  Compare  Bingham,  b.  ii.  c.  16.  s.  16,  17.  These 
assemblies  began  to  be  held  in  the  latter  part  of  the  second  century. 

*  Apost.  can.  38  ;  but  this  is  supposed  to  be  more  recent  than  the  Nicene 
and  Antiochene  synods  (see  Hefele,  Hist,  of  Councils,  i.  474,  E.T.). 

'  Antioch.  can.  20,  ordering  it  to  meet  twice  a  year  ;  cp.  can.  3, 4,  6,  la. 

*  Chalced.  19. 


Provincial  Synods.  275 

prescribed  by  rules '  had  been  neglected,  and  ordered  that  chap.  vin. 
they  should  be  duly  held  twice  a  year,  for  the  purpose  of 
setting  right  whatever  needed  correction.  Since  the  date 
of  that  Council,  Western  synods  had  frequently  upheld  the 
institution  :  a  bishop  duly  cited,  said  the  second  Council  of 
Aries,  must  attend  the  synod,  or  if  too  ill  to  come,  must 
send  a  deputy  ^ :  the  last  canon  of  Agde  in  506  ordered 
that  synods  should  be  duly  held  according  to  the  constitu- 
tions of  the  fathers  ^  :  the  second  Council  of  Lyons  ordered 
that  bishops  of  the  same  province  should  settle  their 
differences  before  their  metropolitan  and  comprovincials  ^. 
The  British  Church,  as  we  have  seen,  had  kept  up  its 
synods  even  when  driven  within  the  Welsh  border  *  :  the 
Frankish  bishops  were  duly  convened  according  to  prece- 
dent ^ :  the  Church  of  Spain  was  equally  observant  of  the 
rule  ^.  It  was  simply  necessary  that  the  new  English 
Church,  as  soon  as  it  could  be  organized  and  consolidated, 
should  have  its  provincial  synods:  Gregory  had,  long  before 
this  time,  taken  for  granted  that,  as  soon  as  possible,  there 
would  be  this  system  at  work,  in  the  southern  parts  of 
Teutonic  Britain,  and  also,  in  due  time,  in  the  northern. 
He  had  spoken  of  a  '  synod '  of  the  province  of  London  '^, 
and  virtually  of  a  synod  of  the  province  of  York.  As  yet 
there  was  but  one  province,  which  included  north  and 
south  under  Canterbury.  And  Wini  did  not  appear  at  the 
Council :  one  would  fain  accept  the  story  that  he  resigned 
his  see  in  penitence  in  672  ^.  At  any  rate,  Theodore  had 
only  four  suffragans  present  in  person,  with  delegates  sent 
to  represent  Wilfrid.    One  knows  not  why  Wilfrid,  a  ready 

^  C.  18  ;  Mansi,  vii.  880.  Compare  Council  of  Tarragona,  a.  516,  c.  6, 
ib.  viii.  542 ;  Council  of  Epaon,  in  Burgundy,  c.  i,  ib.  viii.  559 ;  second  of 
Tours,  c.  i,  ib.  ix.  79a  ;  second  of  Macon,  c.  20,  ib.  ix.  957.  One  Spanish 
council  (Emerita)  in  666  recognizes  <  the  king's  order '  to  hold  a  synod. 

2  c.  71 ;  Mansi,  viii.  336.  s  Mansi,  ix.  787. 

*  Above,  p.  35. 

*  See  fifth  C.  of  Paris,  c.  11  ;  Mansi,  x.  542. 

*  See  fourth  C.  of  Toledo,  c.  3  ;  Mansi,  x.  617. 

'  Bede,  i.  29  :  '■  Quatenus  Lundoniensis  civitatis  episcopus  semper  in 
posterum  a  synodo  propria  debeat  consecrari.'     See  above,  p.  75. 

«  Rudborne,  Hist.  Maj.  Wint.  (Angl.  Sac.  i.  19a).  Erkenwald,  the  next 
bishop  of  London,  was  consecrated  in  675. 

T  % 


276  Council  of  Hertford, 

ciTAP.  VIII.  and  active  traveller,  did  not  make  the  journey  ^ :  and  there 
is  also  something  not  easy  to  explain  in  the  order  in  which 
the  prelates  are  named, — Bisi,  Wilfrid  by  his  own  delegates, 
Putta^,  Lothere  (called  Leutherius),  and  Winfrid.  Wilfrid 
was  considerably  senior  in  consecration  to  all,  Theodore 
included ;  but  Bisi  may  have  been  older  than  his  fellow- 
suffragans  ^.  Bede  makes  it  clear  that  the  prelates  alone 
formed  the  synod :  it  was  a  '  Council  of  bishops,'  and  no 
other  persons  were  constituent  members  of  it :  this  was 
the  ancient  Catholic  constitution  of  synods  ^.  But  it  was 
quite  in  accordance  with  that  constitution  that  'many 
Church-teachers  '  who  were  not  bishops,  but  who  '  both 
loved  and  understood  the  canonical  statutes  of  the  fathers,' 
should  be  present, — as  Malchion,  a  priest  of  signal  ability, 
had  been  present  at  the  first  Council  of  Antioch^,  and 
Athanasius,  as  a  deacon,  at  the  Council  of  Nicaea. 

Theodore  would  be  sure  to  observe  whatever  solemn 
forms  were  in  use  on  the  Continent  at  the  opening  of 
a  synod ^.  We  may  presume  that  the  bishops  and  'teachers' 
prayed  silently  for  a  while,  and  that  then  one  bishop 
prayed  aloud.  The  members  then  sat  down,  two  on  each 
side  the  archbishop,  together  with  the  representatives  of 
Wilfrid.  Our  account  of  the  proceedings  was  drawn  up 
by  Theodore,  and  written  out,  as  in  his  name,  by  '  Titillus 
the  notary  '  or  secretary.  The  solemn  commencement,  '  In 
the  Name  of  our  Lord  God  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,'  was 
a  usual  one  '^,  and  we  find  bishops  sometimes  appending  '  in 

*  It  is  probable  that  Wilfrid,  knowing  what  Gregory  had  contemplated, 
did  not  wish  to  appear  simply  as  one  of  Theodore's  suflFragans. 

^  He  is  the  only  one  of  the  suffragans  who  is  named  after  his  see,  which 
is  called  '  the  castle  of  the  Kentish-men  which  is  named  Hrofescaestir.' 
The  rest  take  national  titles,  such  as  *  of  the  East-Angles,  of  the  Northum- 
brians.' See,  on  this.  Freeman,  ii.  605  ff.  Compare  the  territorial  titles, 
Argyll,  Orkney,  Moray,  Meath,  &c. 

2  See  Bede,  iv.  5,  fin.,  on  his  incapacitating  'infirmity.'  And  Wilfrid 
ranked,  it  is  supposed,  as  bishop  de  facto  of  York  from  669. 

*  Potter  on  Ch.  Government,  p.  225  ;  Pusey  on  Councils,  pp.  34,  51  ; 
Hefele,  i.  17-25,  E.T. 

*  Euseb.  vii.  29. 

"  See  fourth  C.  of  Toledo,  c.  4,  for  an  account  of  the  forms  prescribed  by 
tliat  Council  in  633;  Mansi,  x.  617.  'None  of  the  laity  attended  the 
Council  of  Herudford  ; '  Palgrave,  Engl.  Comm.  p.  171. 

'  Council  of  Osca  or  Huesca,  598,  begins,   *  In  nomine  D.  n.  J.  C. ;  * 


Council  of  Hertford,  277 

the  name  of  Christ '  to  their  own  signatures  ^.  The  next  chap.  vjit. 
words,  *  The  same  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  reigning  for  ever 
and  governing  His  Church/  were  an  amplification  of  a  form 
used  in  the  third  Council  of  Braga  in  572  ^,  and  contrast 
strikingly  with  the  date  from  a  regnal  year  found  in 
canons  of  King  Reccared's  reign  and  in  others  of  the 
Spanish  synods  ^.  Theodore  began,  as  he  himself  says,  by 
requesting  his  beloved  brethren,  for  the  fear  and  love  of 
the  common  Redeemer,  to  join  him  in  taking  counsel 
together  *  on  behalf  of  their  faith,  that '  whatever  had  been 
decreed  and  defined  by  holy  and  approved  fathers  ^  might 
be  inviolably  observed  by  all'  One  might  have  expected 
that  here,  as  in  the  case  of  other  Councils^,  would  have 
followed  some  dogmatic  statement  of  faith :  but  Theodore 
goes  on  to  say  that  he  added  '  other  observations  tending 
to  the  preservation  of  charity  and  of  the  unity  of  the 
Church.'  After  this  prefatory  address,  he  asked  each  of 
the  members  of  the  synod,  in  order,  whether  he  agreed  to 
keep  the  ancient  and  canonical  decrees  of  the  fathers. 
They  all  answered  in  the  affirmative ;  they  would  do  so 
'by  all  means,'  'most  willingly,'  'with  all  their  hearts.' 
Thereupon  Theodore  at  once  produced  the  book  of  canons 
referred  to ;  it  was  the  collection  of  ancient  canons  made 
by  Dionysius  Exiguus  in  the  opening  of  the  sixth  century  '^, 
beginning  with  the  '  Apostolic  canons,'  and  then  exhibiting 
those   of   Nicaea,   Ancyra,  Neocaesarea,  Gangra,  Antioch, 

Mansi,  x.  481.  Comp.  Council  of  Barcelona,  ib.,  'Cum  duce  D.J.  C.  ;* 
2nd  of  Seville,  619,  'In  nomine  Domini  et  Salvatoris  nostri  J. C.,'  ib. 
557.  ist  of  Lateran,  649,  <  In  nomine  Domini  Dei  Salvatoris  nostri  J.  C.,' 
ib.  863. 

^  E.  g.  Mansi,  viii.  622,  at  Valencia,  and  x.  478,  at  Toledo. 

"^  Mansi,  ix.  836,  Compare  Council  of  Clovesho  in  747,  *  Regnante  in 
perpetuum  Domino  nostro  J,  C. ;'  and  Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  146,  &c. 

3  Mansi,  x.  471,  477,  481,  531,  614,  661. 

*  *  Tractemus,'  i.  e.  treat  of,  consider.  See  Mansi,  iii.  892 :  '  Quoniam 
igitur  universa  fuisse  arbitror  tractata,'  &c. 

^  '  Probabilibus.'     So  in  rst  Lateran,  c.  18,  '  probabiles  ecclesiae  patres.* 

*  E.  g.  4th  of  Toledo,  c.  i,  Mansi,  x.  615  ;  6th  of  Toledo,  c.  i,  ib.  661. 

'  See  the  Ballerini,  de  Antiq.  Collect.  Can.  part  3.  c.  i.  s.  2.  9.  This 
collection,  they  say,  ib.  s.  2. 6,  excels  in  the  translation  of  the  Greek  canons, 
in  its  order,  in  its  titles,  '  necnon  ipsa  omnium  documentorum  sinceritate.' 
Theodore  would  naturally  bring  it  with  him  from  Rome. 


278  Canons  of  Hertford. 

CHAP.  vm.  Laodicea,  Constantinople,  Chalcedon,  Sardica,  and  the 
African  code.  In  this  series  Theodore  *  had  marked '  ten 
points,  occurring  'in  different  places,'  as  specially  necessary 
to  be  observed  by  the  English  Church.  These  were  taken 
up  and  considered,  in  the  following  form :  Theodore  calls 
them  '  capitula,'  heads,  or  as  it  is  sometimes  rendered, 
articles. 

(i)  '  That  we  all  keep  the  holy  day  of  Easter  together, 
on  the  Sunday  after  the  fourteenth  moon  of  the  first  month ' 
(i.  e.  so  as  to  exclude  the  fourteenth  moon  from  the  list  of 
possible  Easter  Sundays).  This  was  the  Antiochene  Council's 
rule,  can.  i,  referring  to  the  Nicene  resolution  ^. 

(2)  '  That  no  bishop  shall  invade  the  "  parish  ^ "  (or 
diocese)  of  another,  but  shall  be  content  with  governing 
the  people  entrusted  to  himself.'  This  was  from  the  four- 
teenth and  thirty-sixth  '  Apostolic '  canons,  the  thirteenth 
of  Antioch,  the  second  of  Constantinople,  the  forty-eighth 
of  the  African  code  ^.  (The  fifteenth  Nicene,  adduced  by 
Johnson,  refers  to  the  removal  of  a  bishop  from  one  see  to 
another.) 

(3)  '  That  whatever  monasteries  have  been  consecrated 
to  God,  it  shall  not  be  lawful  for  any  bishop  to  distiirb 
them  in  any  matter,  nor  to  take  away  by  force  any  part  of 
their  property.'  This  is  an  amplification  of  the  twenty- 
fourth   of   Chalcedon,  which  does  not   expressly  refer  to 

^  See  above,  pp.  88,  165,  225. 

^  The  ancient  or  '  Eusebian '  sense  of  napoiKia,  '  the  body  of  Christians 
dwelling  within  a  certain  area  under  one  bishop'  (see  above,  p.  209), 
naturally  passed  into  that  of  '  the  area  within  which  they  dwelt,'  i.  e.  what 
we  call  a  diocese  ;  see  Suicer  in  v.  and  Sclater's  Orig.  Draught  of  Prim. 
Church,  p.  32.  We  find  this  use  also  in  Wihtred's  Privilege  to  Kentish 
churches,  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  239  ;  in  can.  25  of  Council  of  Clovesho, 
ib.  371 ;  in  the  legatine  synod  of  787,  ib.  449  ;  in  king  Kenulf  s  letter  to 
Leo  III,  ib.  522  ;  in  Gregory  Ill's  Ep.  10,  to  St.  Boniface,  Mansi,  xii.  285  ; 
in  Boniface's  to  archbishop  Cuthbert,  c.  1  ;  frequently  in  Hincmar ;  in 
a  grant  of  king  Ethelred,  in  1012,  to  'Hrofenis  parrochiae  episcopus,' 
Palgrave,  Engl.  Com.  p.  ccxxiv,  &c.  In  the  '  Life  of  St.  Anskar'  '  parochia  ' 
and  '  dioecesis '  are  synonymous.  Yet  '  parochia  *  is  used  for  our  '  parish  * 
by  Council  of  Agde,  c.  21 ;  of  Epaon,  c.  25  ;  3rd  (or  2nd)  of  Vaison,  i ;  3rd  of 
Orleans,  c.  5  ;  4th  of  Toledo,  c.  74  ;  Chalon,  c.  5,  and  cf.  Gregory  the  Great's 
Dialogues,  iii.  38  and  the  Anon.  Life  of  Cuthbert,  6.  4.  In  Theodulfs 
Capitula  it  has  both  senses  :  Mansi,  xiii.  995,  998. 

'  So  in  inferior  Councils,  as  3rd  of  Orleans,  a.  538,  c.  15. 


I 


Canons  of  Hertford.  279 

such  encroachments  on  the  part  of  a  bishop,  but  only  places  chap.  vm. 
under  censure  those  who  permit  the  secularization  of 
monasteries  once  dedicated  by  the  consent  of  the  bishop. 
That  Council  indeed  strongly  asserted  the  jurisdiction  of 
bishops  over  monasteries  ^,  which  during  the  last  two 
centuries,  through  the  growth  of  the  monastic  system,  had 
been  restrained  by  canons^  on  the  Continent,  and  often 
ceded  by  '  exemptions '  or  charters  of  privilege. 

(4)  '  That  the  monks  themselves^  do  not  roam  from  place 
to  place,  that  is,  from  monastery  to  monastery,  except  by 
the  permission  of  their  own  abbot,  but  remain  in  that 
obedience  which  at  the  time  of  their  conversion  they 
promised.'  This  is  based  on  the  fourth  and  twenty-third 
canons  of  Chalcedon,  which  were  framed  to  guard  against 
disorderly  interference  in  public  affairs,  ecclesiastical  and 
civil,  on  the  part  of  monks,  such  as  those  violent  Eutychian 
partisans  who  had  behaved  like  a  'gang  of  robbers'  at 
the  second  Council  of  Ephesus.  '  Conversion  '  here  means 
forsaking  of  the  secular  life  for  the  monastic  ^. 

(5)  '  That  no  cleric  shall  leave  his  own  bishop  and  roam 
about  anywhere  at  his  pleasure,  nor,  if  he  comes  anywhere, 
be  received  without  the  commendatory  letters  of  his  prelate. 
And   if,  when  once  received,  he  refuses   to  return  when 

^  Can.  4.  See  the  writer's  '  Notes  on  Canons  of  first  four  General 
Councils,'  p.  141. 

^  See  4th  of  Toledo,  c.  51,  Mansi,  x.  631,  rebuking  bishops  who  set  monks 
to  work  for  them  like  slaves,  and  almost  turn  the  monasteries  into  pos- 
sessions of  their  own.  The  council  limits  a  bishop's  right  in  a  monastery 
to  (i)  exhorting  monks  to  holy  living,  (2)  instituting  abbots,  &c.,  (3)  cor- 
recting breaches  of  the  rule.  See,  too,  Gregory  the  Great's  Roman  council 
forbidding  episcopal  encroachments  ;  e.  g.  no  bishop  shall  take  away  any 
of  the  revenue,  property,  or  documents  of  a  monastery  or  of  the  cells  and 
*  vills'  which  belong  to  it ;  Mansi,  x.  486.  Cp.  Guizot,  Civil,  in  Fr.  lect. 
15.  The  Council  of  Rouen  distinctly  recognizes  the  bishop's  duty  of 
inquiring  into  the  internal  state  of  monasteries  and  nunneries;  ib.  x.  1201. 

^  '  Ipsi.'  The  other  reading  is  '  episcopi.'  This  is  defended  by  Todd, 
Life  of  St.  Patrick,  p.  49.  But '  it  is  impossible'  (Plummer)  :  see  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  iii.  121. 

*  Cp.  Reg.  S.  Bened.  i.  So  Gregory  the  Great  used  the  term,  ep.  iii.  65. 
In  Council  of  Gerona,  c.  6,  it  is  used  for  the  entrance  into  clerical  life  ; 
Mansi,  viii.  549.  So  in  4th  of  Aries,  c.  i,  2  ;  ib.  viii.  626.  Compare  Greg. 
Turon.  de  Mirac.  S.  Mart.  iii.  15  :  '  converti  decrevit,  scilicet,  ut  humiliatis 
capillis  .  .  .  deserviret  antistiti.' 


28o  Canons  of  Hertford. 

CHAP.  VIII.  summoned,  both  the  receiver  and  the  person  who  has  been 
received  shall  incur  excommunication.'  This  is  made  up 
from  the  fifteenth  and  thirty-fourth  Apostolic  canons,  the 
third  and  seventh  Antiochene,  the  forty-first  and  forty- 
second  Laodicene,  twenty-third  of  Chalcedon,  and  hundred- 
and-fifth  African  ^  Commendatory  letters  of  this  sort,  called 
'  systaticae,'  were  natural  and  befitting  guarantees  of  the 
cleric's  character  2. 

(6)  '  That  foreign  bishops  and  clergy  be  content  with 
the  hospitality  freely  ofiered  them,  and  that  no  one  of  them 
be  allowed  to  perform  any  sacerdotal  office  without  per- 
mission of  the  bishop  in  whose  diocese  (parochia)  he  is 
known  to  be.'  This  is  based  on  the  thirteenth  Antiochene 
and  eleventh  Sardican. 

(7)  '  That  the  synod  be  assembled  twice  in  the  year.'  This 
was  altered  in  discussion,  on  account  of  *  divers  hindrances' 
to  two  meetings,  exactly  as  the  Nicene  provision  for  two 
such  meetings,  before  Lent  and  in  the  autumn,  or  the 
Antiochene  specifying  the  third  week  after  Easter  and 
October,  had  been  altered  for  Africa  by  the  Council  of 
Hippo  into  a  yearly  meeting  ^.  The  resolution  stood  thus, 
*  That  we  meet  once  a  year  on  the  ist  of  August,  in  the 
place  which  is  called  Clofeshoch,' — a  place  most  probably 
to  be  identified  with  Cliff'-at-Hoe  near  Rochester, — the 
peninsula  of  Hoe  or  Hoo  being  a  convenient  basis  for  the 
Mercian  supremacy  in  Kent*,  and  also  near  at  hand  for 

^  Compare  Council  of  Reims,  a.  625,  c.  12:  'Quod  si  sine  epistolis  (sui 
pontificis)  profectus  fuerit  manifestis,  nullo  modo  recipiatur ; '  Mansi,  x. 
596.  So  Council  of  Agde,  c.  38,  ib,  viii.  331  ;  and  of  Epaon,  c.  6,  ib.  viii. 
560.  Theodulf,  a  deacon  of  Paris,  was  often  excommunicated  by  his 
bishop,  because  he  delayed  to  return  *ad  ecclesiam  suam  in  qua  .  .  . 
ordinatus  fuerat ' ;  Greg.  Turon.  H.  Fr.  x.  14. 

'■^  See  Bingham,  b.  ii.  c.  4.  s.  5  (vol.  i.  p.  100).  He  distinguishes  the 
'  commendatoriae '  given  to  clergy  when  about  to  travel  (among  others) 
from  the  '  dimissoriae '  given  to  clergy  who  wished  to  settle  in  another 
diocese.     See  '  Notes  on  Canons  of  first  four  General  Councils,'  p.  163. 

^  Mansi,  iii.  919  :  comp.  another  form  of  it.  Cod.  Afr.  18,  ib.  719.  So 
the  second  of  Orleans  in  533,  and  three  others  following  it,  prescribe  one 
meeting  ;  the  third  of  Toledo  allows  one  to  suffice  because  of  distance  and 
poverty  ;  Mansi,  ix.  997.     The  fourth  of  Toledo  names  May  18  as  the  day. 

*  See  T.  Kerslake's  '  Vestiges  of  the  Supremacy  of  Mercia '  (reprinted 
from  Transact,  of  Bristol  and  Gloucestershire  Archaeological  Society), 


Canons  of  Hertford.  281 

Theodore.     Councils  did  meet  there  in  716,  742,  and — the  chap.  vm. 
most  important — in  747. 

(8)  '  That  no  bishop  shall  set  himself  above  another  out 
of  ambition,  but  all  shall  acknowledge  the  time  and  the 
order  of  their  consecration.'  This  is  based  on  the  eighty- 
sixth  of  the  African  code  ^. 

(9)  This  was  one  of  Theodore's  favourite  points, '  That  as 
the  number  of  the  faithful  increases,  the  bishops  be  increased 
in  number.'  Theodore  did  not  extract  this  literally  from 
his  book:  he  inferred  from  certain  African  canons 2, 
restraining  an  irregular  multiplication  of  bishoprics,  and 
also  from  the  sixth  Sardican  canon  of  like  purport,  that  an 
increase,  made  regularly  and  for  good  reasons,  was  desir- 
able ^.  In  his  native  Cilicia,  there  were  seventeen  dioceses, 
mostly  large  ^ ;  and  his  provincial  visitation  had  convinced 
him  of  the  necessity  of  dividing  the  too  large  diocese  of 
Lichfield  and  the  enormous  diocese  of  York.  But  although 
his  proposition  seems  to  us  undeniably  right,  and  Bede  in 
his  later  years  urged  the  same  idea  on  Bishop  Egbert^ 
long  after  the  Northumbrian  diocese  of  673  had  been 
divided,  Theodore  could  not  carry  his  suffragans  with 
him^;  it  may  be  that  Wilfrid's  deputies  spoke  out  what 
they  knew  that  their  master  would  feel ;  and  this  opposi- 
tion, successful  at  the  time,  though  overborne  afterwards, 

p.  27  ff.  He  observes  with  much  force  that  this  Kentish  peninsula  would 
be  very  accessible  from  Tilbury  on  the  other  side  of  the  Thames.  He 
identifies  the  Cealchythe  of  six  later  councils  with  Chalk  in  the  same 
district,  S.W.  of  ClifiF,  Hatfield  with  Cliff  itself,  and  would  even  place 
Herutford  in  the  neighbourhood. 

^  See  Mansi,  iii.  789. 

2  Afric.  53,  56,  98  ;  Mansi,  iii.  744.  749,  803. 

^  It  is  suggested  with  great  probability  by  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  122, 
that  this  plan  for  dividing  the  '  parochiae  '  or  dioceses  was  mistaken  for 
an  introduction  of  the  '  parochial  system,*  such  as  Elmham  attributes  to 
Theodore.  Hist.  Mon.  S.  Aug.,  tit.  8.  s.  115.  See  also  Lord  Selborne's 
Ancient  Facts  and  Fictions,  &c.,  p.  116  ff. 

*  Bingham,  b.  ix.  c.  3.  s.  16. 

*  *  Quis  non  videat  quanto  sit  melius  tarn  enorme  pondua  ecclesiastici 
regiminis  in  plures  .  .  .  dividi,  quam  unum  sub  fasce  quern  portare  non 
possit  opprimi  ?  *  Ep.  to  Egb.  5.  He  cites  Gregory's  programme  as  to 
twelve  bishops  for  the  North,  under  a  metropolitan  of  York.     Above,  p.  75. 

«  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  86. 


282  Canons  of  Hertford. 

CHAP.  viiT.  accounts  for  much  of  the  difficulties  that  followed.  The 
Council-record  intimates  a  purpose  only  deferred,  not 
abandoned  :  '  On  this  point,  for  the  time,  we  said  nothing.' 
(10)  *As  to  marriages,  that  no  one  be  allowed  to  have 
any  but  a  lawful  marriage.  Let  no  one  commit  incest  ^ ; 
let  no  one  leave  his  own  wife,  except,  as  the  holy  Gospel 
teaches,  because  of  fornication.  But  if  any  one  shall  have 
expelled  his  own  wife  who  has  been  united  to  him  in  lawful 
matrimony,  if  he  is  minded  to  be  rightly  a  Christian,  let 
him  not  join  himself  to  any  other,  but  remain  in  that  state, 
or  else  be  reconciled  to  his  own  wife/  Now,  in  Theodore's 
Penitential  ^  penance  is  even  imposed  on  a  husband  who, 
having  found  his  wife  to  be  unfaithful,  '  refuses  to  put 
her  away ; '  as  if  the  exception  in  Matt.  v.  32,  xix.  9,  con- 
stituted an  obligation  to  divorce,  which  is  more  than 
can  be  said.  Far  severer  penance  is  assigned  to  one  who 
marries  another  woman  after  putting  away  his  wife ;  but 
.  this  refers  to  the  case  of  divorce  not  justified  by  that 
exception.  There  is  a  passage  in  the  Penitential  which 
allows^  the  husband  of  a  faithless  wife  not  only  to 
put  her  away,  but  to  marry  another,  the  permission  to 
divorce  in  that  one  case  being  reasonably  held  to  involve 
a  permission  to  re-marry.  This  illustrates  the  sense  of 
the  Hertford  '  capitulum,'  which  m^kes  it  at  least  lawful 
for  the  injured  husband  to   abandon  the  faithless  wife, 

^  For  canons  of  that  period  against  incest,  see  Council  of  Reims,  8.  a. 
624,  Mansi,  x.  595 ;  and  5th  of  Paris,  c.  14,  ib.  x.  542  (which  forbids,  inter 
alia,  marriage  of  first  cousins). 

^  Poenit.  i.  14,  4  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  188.  The  Penitential  pro- 
fesses to  represent  Theodore's  answers  to  questions  about  penance  and 
other  points  of  discipline,  as  they  came  to  the  knowledge  of  a  *  disciple  of 
the  Humbrians '  (Northumbrians  ?)  mainly  through  the  medium  of  a  priest 
named  Eoda.     See  the  remarks  in  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  173. 

^  Poenit.  ii.  12.  5  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  199.  In  this  answer  the 
divorced  adulteress  herself,  if  penitent,  is  allowed  after  five  years  to  marry 
another  man.  The  question  of  re-marrying  in  the  excepted  case  of  the 
wife's  adultery  was  undecided  in  the  ancient  Church.  St.  Augustine  per- 
sonally held  it  wrong  for  an  injured  husband,  who  had  put  away  his 
faithless  wife,  to  marry  again  ;  but  did  not  think  the  act  plainly  for- 
bidden by  Scripture,  nor  punishable  by  the  Church.  It  was  in  effect 
tolerated,  though  some  great  authorities  dissuaded  from  it.  See  Bingham, 
b,  xxii.  c.  2.  s.  12,  and  Pusey  in  Lib.  Fathers,  Tertullian,  p.  443  ff. 
'hvoKvoai  in  Matt.  xix.  3  implies  solutio  vinculi. 


Canons  of  Hertford,  283 

and   in   the  next  words  clearly  contemplates  a  different  chap.  vm. 
case,  that  of  one  who,  without  such  warrant,  has  driven 
away  a  wife  who  has  never  forfeited  her  rights;   he  is 
thereupon  reminded  that,  as  a  Christian,  he  is  bound  to 
remain  single  or  to  be  reconciled  to  her^ 

Nine  resolutions,  then,  were  passed, — one  having  been 
for  the  time  withdrawn.  Theodore  was  a  thorough  man  of 
business  :  he  would  not  go  by  understandings  and  vaguely 
expressed  agreements  :  he  would  have  everything  set  down 
definitely,  and  accepted  formally:  there  should  be  no 
mistake  as  to  what  was  or  was  not  passed, — no  loophole 
left  whereby,  in  after  days,  any  '  occasion  of  contention ' 
should  be  caused  by  any  one  who  had  sat  in  the  synod. 
There  stood  the  record,  fairly  written  out  by  the  secretary : 
according  to  the  orderly  continental  usage,  each  member 
must  sign  it  with  his  own  hand.  They  did  so,  probably 
in  such  words  as,  '  I,  — ,  bishop  of  the  church  of  — ,  have 
subscribed  ^ : '  and  Wilfrid's  delegates  would  each  sign  as 
'in  the  place  of  my  lord  Wilfrid^.'  And,  as  a  final 
guarantee  of  the  stability  of  the  resolutions,  it  was  enacted, 
as  was  often  the  case  in  continental  synods^,  that  any 
bishop  who  should  ever '  attempt  to  contravene  or  infringe ' 
the  decrees  then  subscribed,  should  incur  '  separation  from 
all  sacerdotal  ofiice,  and  from  the  fellowship  of  his  brethren.' 
'  May  the  grace  of  God,'  Theodore  concluded,  '  keep  us  in 
safety,  living  in  the  unity  of  His  holy  Church.' 

So  ended  the  Council  of  Hertford,  a  memorable  assembly 
in  the  annals  of  the  English  Church, — hardly  less  so  in 

^  Theodore  perhaps  had  in  his  mind  St.  Basil's  dictum  in  Ep.  217,  can. 
77,  that  he  who  left  r^v  vofzificvs  avrqi  avua<p6iiaav  yvvaiKa,  and  married 
another,  was,  according  to  the  Lord's  judgement,  an  adulterer. 

2  E.g.  4th  of  Toledo,  Mansi,  x.  641.  Sometimes  the  form  was,  'Haec 
statuta  definiens  subscripsi;'  7th  of  Toledo,  ib.  x.  770.  We  find  the 
form,  '  Relegi  et  subscripsi,'  in  Council  of  Epaon,  ib.  viii.  564;  or  *  Consensi 
et  subscripsi,'  4th  of  Orleans,  ib.  ix.  120. 

*  E.g.  in  the  third  council  of  Toledo,  a.  589  :  *  Gaianus  .  .  .  agens  vicem 
domini  mei  Fructuosi  episcopi  subscripsi;'  Mansi,  ix.  1002.  So  5th  of 
Toledo,  ib.  x.  657,  &c.  Or  *  presbyter'  or  'diaconus  episcopi,*  8th  of  Toledo, 
ib.  x.  1223.     See  Hefele,  i.  21,  E.  T. 

*  E.  g.  3rd  of  Orleans,  c.  33,  denounces  any  (bishops)  who  neglect  to 
observe  the  decrees;  Mansi,  ix.  20:  4th  of  Orleans,  'Si  quis  .  .  .  transgredi 
tentaverit;'  ib.  ix.  119  ;  3rd  of  Braga,  '  transgressus  ;'  ib.  ix.  841. 


284  Council  of  Hertford. 

HAP.  VIII.  those  of  the  English  people.  For  while  it  gave  expression 
and  consolidation  to  the  idea  of  ecclesiastical  unity,  it  was 
also  '  the  first  of  all  national  gatherings^'  for  such  legisla- 
tion as  should  affect  the  whole  land  of  the  English,  the 
precursor  of  the  Witenagemots  and  the  Parliaments  of 
the  one  indivisible  imperial  realm.  Theodore  may  thus 
far  take  no  mean  place  among  the  men  who  helped  to 
make  England  ^ 

^  Green,  Hist.  Engl.  People,  p.  30,  and  Making  of  England,  pp.  333,  382. 
Comp.  Stubbs,  in  Diet.  Biogr.  iv.  928,  930.  It  has  been  truly  said  that 
*  under  the  masterly  hand  of  Theodore  the  unity  of  the  English  Church 
afforded  a  model  of  unity  for  the  nascent  English  State.' 

2  Freeman  (Hist.  Essays,  iv.  239)  has  said  of  the  mission  of  Augustine 
that  it  began  the  process  by  which  the  alter  orhis  of  Britain  was  to  be  taken 
out  of  its  isolation.  Another  step  in  that  process  was  the  archiepiscopate 
of  Theodore  ;  but  the  process  was  very  gradual  until  the  Norman  Con- 
quest completed  it. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

It  might  well  seem  that  in  the  ease  of  Archbishop  East- 
Theodore,  even  a  temporary  check  was  to  be  followed  by  ^j^cesT 
an  advance,  with  hardl}'^  sufficient  interval  to  allow  of  divided. 
a  sense  of  disappointment.  As  we  have  seen,  he  had  not 
carried  his  point  about  the  partition  of  dioceses,  when 
he  proposed  it  to  the  Council :  it  was  considered,  but  the 
decision  was  deferred.  Yet  Bisi  of  Dunwich,  on  his 
return  home,  began  to  feel  the  pressure  of  infirmities  ^, 
increased  by  the  exertion  of  a  double  journey,  and  deter- 
mined to  resign  his  office.  Theodore  seized  the  opportunity ; 
and,  doubtless  with  the  consent  of  the  East- Anglian  king 
Aldwulf ,  the  son  of  Ethelhere  and  the  nephew  of  Anna  ^ 
he  divided  the  diocese  by  forming  a  new  see  at  Elmham, 
about  the  centre  of  our  present  Norfolk  ^.  Bad  win  became 
its  first  prelate,  while  Acci  was  placed  in  the  chair  of 
St.  Felix.  It  was  the  terrible  irruption  of  the  Northmen, 
two  centuries  later,  which  in  its  results  annulled  this 
partition  ;  so  that  after  Dunwich  had  been  permanently 
abandoned,  and  the  line  of  bishops  of  Elmham  had  continued 
until  after  the  Conquest  *,  the  single  East- Anglian  bishopric 
was  transferred  to  Thetford  in  1075,  and  fixed  at  Norwich 
in  1094. 

^  Bede,  iv.  5  :   '  Quo  adhuc  superstite,*  &c. 

^  Not  his  son,  as  Thomas  of  Ely  thought,  Vit.  Etheldr.  c.  7,  Act.  SS. 
Bened.  ii.  744.  Aldwulf  s  mother  was  Hereswid,  Bede,  iv.  23  ;  so  that  on 
her  side  he  was  the  nephew  of  Hilda.  He  succeeded  his  uncle  Ethelwold 
in  663,  and  reigned  until  713.  For  his  personal  recollection  of  king 
Redwald's  '  fanum,*  see  Bede,  ii.  15.  His  daughter  Redburge,  or  Edburge 
(or  Egburge,  Act.  SS.  Bened.  iii.  279),  became  abbess  of  Repton ;  Tho. 
Eli.  1.  c.  Two  others,  Ethelburga  and  Hwsetburga,  became  abbesses  of 
Hackness. 

'  He  was  adhering  to  '  tribal  demarcations '  within  the  kingdom ; 
Green,  Making  of  Engl.  p.  343. 

*  See  Jessopp's  Diocesan  History  of  Norwich,  pp.  28,  29. 


286  Queen  Etheldred 

CHAP.  IX.  But  the  attention  of  East-Anglian  Churchmen  was  pro- 
bably attracted,  in  this  year  673,  with  at  least  equal  live- 
liness of  interest,  by  an  event  which  had  all  the  charm 
of  ecclesiastical  romance,  while  it  inaugurated  an  important 
monastic  undertaking,  and  had  the  effect,  early  in  the 
twelfth  century,  of  restoring   another   episcopate   to   the 

Etheldred  eastern  part  of  England.  We  must  remember  that  Ethel- 
^'  dred^,  the  daughter  of  the  devout  king  Anna,  and  the 
sister  and  aunt  of  several  royal  nuns,  had  become  the 
reluctant  wife,  first  of  Tonbert  the  chief  of  the  Southern 
Gyrvians  or  'fen-land  men,'  who  inhabited  South  Cam- 
bridgeshire, and  afterwards  of  Egf rid  of  Northumbria.  The 
jointure  or  '  morning-gift  ^ '  which  she  had  received  from 
her  first  husband  was  no  other  than  the  isle  of  Ely,  which 
Bede  describes  as  a  district  of  '  six  hundred  hydes  ^,  like  an 
island,  surrounded  either  by  marshes  or  waters,  whence 
it  took  its  name  from  the  abundance  of  eels  which  are 
caught  in  those  marshes':  which  the  historian  of  the 
Conquest  describes  as  '  strictly  an  island '  in  the  ages  before 

*  See  Bede,  iv.  19,  and  Thomas  of  Ely's  Life  of  St.  Etheldred  in  Act. 
SS.  Bened.  ii.  740,  and  epitomized  in  Angl.  Sac.  i.  597.  Etheldred  was 
born  about  630  at  Ermynge,  now  Ixning,  in  Suffolk,  and  married  to 
Tonbert  in  652,  two  years  before  her  father's  death.  Tonbert  died  in  655  : 
and  her  relations  married  her  to  Egfrid  in  660.  Bishop  Stubbs  has 
observed  that  the  connexion  of  the  Gyrvii  with  East  Anglia  accounts  for 
the  fact  that  they  were  Christianized  much  earlier  than  their  Mercian 
neighbours  :  for  Thomas,  a  Gyrvian,  was  consecrated  bishop  of  Dunwich 
six  years  before  the  mission  to  the  Mid- Angles. 

^  Lappenberg,  ii.  338 ;  Turner,  iii.  71.  Hexham,  as  we  have  seen,  was 
her  jointure  from  Egfrid. 

3  As  usual,  he  calls  them  *  familiae.'  See  above,  p.  182.  Kemble,  Cod. 
Dipl.  iii.  p.  XXX,  connects  it  with  the  root  of  *  higan,  familia.'  Bede,  iv. 
19:  'Est  autem  Elge,'  &c.  He  had  previously  described  the  isle  as 
'undique  aquis  ac  paludibus  circumdata.'  See  Bentham's  Hist,  of  Ch.  of 
Ely,  pp.  47,  79.  Thomas  of  Ely  describes  it  as  '  locus  diflficultate  adeundi 
et  arboribus  hinc  inde  circumdatus,  habens  aquas  de  supercilio  collis 
tenues,  sed  irriguas ' ;  Vit.  S.  Etheldr.  c.  8,  in  Act.  SS.  Ben.  ii.  745  :  and 
in  his  prefatory  account  of  Ely,  quoted  by  Wharton,  Angl.  Sac.  i.  xli,  this 
twelfth-century  chronicler  celebrates  the  quietness  and  security  of  the 
'famous  isle,'  its  rich  soil,  its  pleasant  gardens  and  woods,  its  facilities 
for  sport  ('ferarum  venatione'),  its  abundance  of  cattle  and  fish  :  '  Sunt 
in  gremio  insulae  duodecim  ecclesiae  cum  villis  campestribus  et  modicis 
insulanis.'  Malmesbury  says  (G.  P.  iv.  183)  that  the  surprise  of  visitor* 
at  the  abundance  of  fish  was  an  amusement  to  the  natives. 


founds  a  Monastery  at  Ely,  287 

those  drainage  works  *  which  have  changed  the  course  of  chap.  ix. 
the  rivers  and  altered  the  face  of  the  country  \'  Here  she 
led  a  devout  life  during  the  five  years  of  her  widowhood : 
and  after  her  second  marriage,  she  lived  twelve  years  in 
Egf rid's  house  before  she  succeeded  in  extorting  his  consent 
to  her  retirement  to  the  monastery  of  his  aunt  Ebba  at 
Coldingham.  At  last,  in  672,  she  was  permitted  to  take  the 
veil  there  from  the  hands  of  Wilfrid,  to  whom  this  un- 
healthy aversion  for  her  wedded  life  as  such, — for  against 
Egfrid  personally  she  had  no  complaint, — appeared  a  token 
of  high  sanctity  ^.  After  she  had  spent  about  a  year  in 
the  house  which  reared  its  lofty  buildings  near  the  pro- 
montory which  still  bears  the  name  of  its  foundress  ^,  her 
husband's  longing  to  regain  her,  stimulated  by  the  advice 
of  his  thanes,  who  doubtless  regarded  his  previous  con- 
cession as  a  weakness,  brought  him  within  a  short  distance 
of  Coldingham.  Etheldred  had  but  just  time  to  fly  south- 
wards :  and  legends  grew  up  as  to  the  marvels  which  had 
secured  her  escape  and  waited  on  her  journey  *.  At  last 
she  found  herself  safe  amid  the  fens  and  streams  of  her 
own  domain  ;  and  there,  after  some  deliberation  as  to  the 
choice  of  a  site,  she  fixed  upon  '  an  elevation  which  in  that 
part  of  Britain  passes  for  a  considerable  hill  ^,'  and  there 
founded  a  double  monastery  after  the  model  of  Whitby  and 

*  Freeman,  iv.  462  :  see  his  map  there. 

^  Bede,  iv.  19,  quite  agrees  with  Wilfrid.  See  too  Thomas  of  Ely,  c.  9. 
Contrast  St.  Columba  forbidding  a  wife  to  think  of  going  into  a  nunnery, 
and  citing  Kom.  vii.  2,  Matt,  xix,  6;  Adamnan,  ii.  41.  Gregory  himself 
declared  that  '  the  dissolution  of  marriage  religionis  causa,  though 
allowed  by  human  law,  was  forbidden  by  Divine,'  quoting  Matt.  xix.  6 ; 
Ep.  xi.  45.     See  the  story  of  Berthegundis  in  Greg.  Tur.  ix.  33. 

*  *  Aedificia  sublimiter  erecta,'  Bede,  iv.  25. 

*  See  Thomas  of  Ely,  c.  i  r .  Etheldred  appears  in  these  tales  as  sheltered 
for  a  week  by  waters  miraculously  rising  up  around  a  hill  called  Coldbert's 
Head;  and  as  halting  near  the  Humber,  where  her  staff,  fixed  in  the 
ground  while  she  slept,  grew  into  the  largest  ash-tree  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  *  Etheldredstowe.'  See  Bentham,  Ch.  of  Ely,  p.  52 ;  Handbook  to  Eastern 
Cathedrals,  pp.  195,  229,  on  the  sculptures  representing  the  life  of  Ethel- 
dred, in  the  octagon  of  Ely  cathedral. 

^  Freeman,  i.  275.  She  at  first  thought  of  a  place  called  Cratunden, 
where,  according  to  an  Ely  legend,  a  church  had  been  built  by  St.  Augus- 
tine and  destroyed  by  Penda ;  comp.  Thomas's  preface  in  Angl.  Sac. 
i.  p.  xlii,  and  his  *  Vita,'  c.  15,  in  Act.  SS.  Bened.  ii.  754. 


288  Etheldred  at  Ely, 

CHAP.  IX.  Coldinghani  ^,  the  precursor  of  the  great  abbey  which  has 
left  us  *  the  most  stately  and  varied  ^ '  of  our  cathedral 
churches.  At  last  she  was  happy,  in  the  life  which  repre- 
sented her  ideal,  and  she  enjoyed  the  support  of  her  cousin 
King  Aldwulf,  and  the  counsel  and  spiritual  aid  of  her 
chaplain  Huna  ^, — and,  ere  long,  the  companionship  of  her 
elder  sister  Sexburga,  the  ex-queen  of  Kent  *.  '  It  is  said '  that 
during  her  six  years'  abbacy  '  she  never  wore  linen,  but 
always  wool':  that  she  seldom  used  a  warm  bath  except  on 
the  eves  of  the  three  great  festivals,  among  which  it  is  curious 
to  find  the  Epiphany  taking  the  place  of  Christmas  ^ :  and 
that  on  those  occasions  she  would  first  wash,  or  cause  her 
attendants  to  wash,  the  feet  of  the  nuns.  Moreover,  it  was 
reported  that  she  seldom  took  more  than  one  meal  a  day, 
except  on  the  greater  solemnities,  or  under  some  pressing 
necessity :  and  that  she  never  failed,  when  in  fair  health, 
to  stay  in  the  church,  intent  on  prayer,  from  the  matin 
service  ^  which  was  then  said  soon  after  midnight,  until 
dawn.     One  vivid  little  touch  in  Bede's  picture  "^  combines 

^  '  Viros  et  mulieres  in  eodem  simul  monasterio  .  .  .  et  in  ecclesia  diutius 
servatum;'  Tho.  Eli.  in  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  599.  The  whole  isle  was  devoted 
to  the  purposes  of  the  community  ;  ib.     See  above,  p.  213. 

^  So  Freeman  esteemed  it,  i.  276. 

^  Tho.  Eli.  c.  15.  After  her  death  Huna  became  a  hermit  on  an  islet 
afterwards  called  Hun-ey.  According  to  Thomas,  Wilfrid  alone  exercised 
episcopal  authority  in  Ely,  and  hallowed  Etheldred  as  abbess.  See 
Bentham,  p.  56,  that  Ely  was  exempted  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  East- 
Anglian  bishop. 

*  Tho.  Eli.  c,  18  :  '  Sed  et  sanctorum  genetrix  Sexburga,'  &c. 

^  '  Paschae,  Pentecostes,  Epiphaniae  ; '  Bede,  iv.  19.  In  Bede's  Ep.  to 
Egbert,  c.  9,  the  chief  days  are  named  as  the  Nativity,  the  Epiphany,  and 
Easter,  Pentecost  being  omitted.  The  Epiphany  occurs  as  a  pre-eminent 
holy-day  in  his  Life  of  Cuthbert,  c.  11. 

*  *  Synaxeos.*  This  word,  originally  used  for  (i)  a  church-meeting  for 
worship  (compare  colleda),  and  specifically  (2)  for  the  Eucharistic  celebra- 
tion, had  come  to  mean  (3)  the  divine  office  for  the  canonical  hours  ;  see 
Suicer  and  Ducange  in  v.  ;  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  10.  Cp.  Columban,  Reg. 
Coen.  7  ;  Bon  if.  Ep.  29.  *  Septem  igitur  sinaxes  sancti  patres  canendas 
constituerunt,'  Thorpe's  Anc.  Laws,  p.  328.  For  references  to  the  matin 
office,  see  Bede,  iii.  12 ;  iv.  7  ;  v.  9.  Thomas  of  Ely  says  that  all  the 
inmates  of  the  monastery  were  taught  'to  love  Divine  worship,  et  decorem 
domus  Dei  tota  observantia  custodire ' ;  Vit.  Etheldr.  15. 

^  Bede,  iv.  19  :  '  Ferunt  autem  quia  cum  praefato  tumore,'  &c.  He  tells 
the  story  of  the  operation  performed  by  her  physician  Kynifrid :  she  died 


Disorders  at  Coldtngham,  289 

the  early  habits  of  the  young  East- Anglian  princess  with  chap.  ix. 
the  last  illness  of  the  abbess-queen,  which  was  caused  by 
the  recurring  pestilence,  but  was  also  accompanied  by  a  huge 
and  painful  tumour  under  the  jaw.  '  This  ailment  pleases 
me  well,'  she  would  say  :  *  in  my  young  days,  I  wore  heavy 
necklaces  of  gold  and  pearls ; — now,  in  their  place,  I  have 
to  carry  this  hot  red  swelling :  fit  penance  for  my  former 
vanity,  if  it  may  but  avail ! '  She  died  in  679  ^,  and  was 
succeeded  as  abbess  by  Sexburga. 

Her  stay  at  Coldingham  had  probably  been  subsequent  Colding- 
to  that  visit  which  Cuthbert,  we  are  told,  paid  to  Ebba, 
when, '  staying  there  some  days,  he  exhibited,  both  in  action 
and  in  word,  that  way  of  righteousness  which  he  preached^ : ' 
and  it  was,  to  all  appearance,  prior  to  that  grave  moral 
deterioration  of  this  community,  which  by  degrees  infected 
all  the  officials  except  the  abbess ;  beginning  with  mere 
frivolity  and  a  passion  for  '  fine  garments,' — a   frequent 

with  the  incision  still  'gaping.'  Thomas  of  Ely  says  that  she  used  to 
tell  the  postulants  for  admission,  *  illam  esse  veram  vitam  quae  prae- 
sentis  vitae  emeretur  incommodo  ; '  c.  15.  See  Alcuin,  de  Pontif.  Ebor. 
p.  770  if.,  'in  corpore  vulnus  .   .  .  Apparet  sanum,'  &c. 

'  See  Alb.  Butler,  June  23.  Florence  gives  the  same  date,  '9  Cal.  July.' 
There  is  apparently  a  mistake  in  the  text  of  Tho.  Eli.  '9  Cal,  JunW  (May 
24).  Sexburga  in  695  caused  her  sister's  remains  to  be  re-interred  in 
*  a  white  marble  coffin  of  beautiful  workmanship  brought  from  the  desolate 
little  city  of  Grantchester '  (near  Cambridge);  Bede,  iv.  19;  cp.  Clark's 
Cambridge,  p.  9.  The  abbacy  was  held  in  succession,  after  Etheldred, 
by  Sexburga,  her  daughter  Ermenild,  late  queen  of  Mercia,  and  her 
granddaughter  Werburga.  It  was  in  Edgar's  time  that  the  whole  jurisdic- 
tion within  the  bounds  of  the  isle  of  Ely  was  granted  to  '  St.  Etheldred,' 
that  is,  to  her  church  ;  Palgrave,  p.  165.  Comp.  Hist.  Eli.  i.  4  (Gale, 
Script,  i.  465),  and  see  Freeman,  i.  293.  Her  name  became  popularized 
as  'Audrey'  (cp.  As  You  L'ke  It,  iii.  i  ;  whence  'tawdry,'  used  of  cheap 
lace  mementoes  of  Ely,  cp.  Winter's  Tale,  iv.  3,  '  you  promised  me  a  tawdry 
lace*),  and  a  place  near  Ely  was  called  Aldreth;  see  Freeman,  iv.  463. 

^  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  10.  It  was  during  this  visit  that  he  went  down 
one  night  to  the  sea,  went  into  it  up  to  his  neck,  and  continued  singing 
psalms  till  daybreak,  tlien  came  out,  knelt  down,  and  said  his  prayers, 
whereupon  '  two  quadrupeds  which  are  commonly  called  otters  '  came  up 
out  of  the  water,  fawned  upon  him,  warmed  his  feet  with  their  breath, 
and  dried  them  with  their  hair, — then,  when  he  had  blessed  them, 
'  patrias  relapsa  sunt  sub  undas.'  A  monk,  watching  the  scene  from 
a  cliff,  was  so  awed  that  he  could  scarcely  totter  home,  and  implored 
Cuthbert's  pardon.  '  Did  you,  then,  act  the  spy  on  me  ?  Well,  I  forgive 
you,  if  you  will  tell  no  one  of  it  while  I  live.' 

U 


290  Disorders  at  Coldingham, 

CHAP.  IX.  infirmity  among  the  inmates  of  Saxon  cloisters  ^, — but  pro- 
ceeding, as  Bede  intimates,  in  other  cases,  to  '  wickedness ' 
sufficient  to  discredit  the  system  of  double  convents  ^.  It 
is  the  first  instance  of  monastic  corruption  which  Bede  has 
to  record:  in  his  later  life  he  knew  of  much  deflection 
from  the  received  conventual  standard  ^,  but  he  mentions 
none  which  can  match  the  degeneracy  at  Coldingham. 
A  priest  named  ^Edgils  *,  then  a  monk  of  the  house,  lived 
to  tell  him  how  an  Irish-born  inmate  ^,  devoted  to  peni- 
tential asceticism,  was  one  day  returning  to  Coldingham, 
after  an  excursion,  with  a  brother-monk,  when,  looking 
at  the  monastery  from  afar,  he  predicted  that  a  fire  would 
consume  it,  and  on  being  afterwards  questioned  by  the 
abbess,  reluctantly  told  her  that  he  had  learned  this  from 
a  vision  ^,  but  that  the  doom  would  not  be  accomplished  in 
her  days ;  how,  after  the  community  was  informed  of  this 

^  On  this  see  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  450,  473,  509  ;  Lingard,  A.-S. 
Ch.  i.  230  ;  also  ib.  iii.  265,  for  St.  Edith's  defence  of  her  splendid 
clothing ;  Turner,  iii.  47.  See  Aldhelm,  de  Laud.  Virginitatis,  55-58  ; 
Boniface's  Ep.  to  Cuthbert,  c.  9 ;  and  Chrodegang's  Regula  Canonicorum, 
c.  54,  'caveant  canonici  ne  per  immoderatum  cultum  vestium  dehonestent 
religionis  dignitatem.* 

^  Bede,  iv.  25,  '  a  malitia  inhabitantium,'  referring  to  Vulg.  Ps.  cvi.  34. 

^  Bede,  Ep.  to  Egbert,  6.  *  Bede,  iv.  25  :  *  Quae  mihi  cuncta,'  &c. 

°  His  name  was  Adamnan.  He  had  committed  '  sceleris  aliquid'  in 
his  youth,  and  when  he  came  to  himself  had  consulted  a  priest  of  his  own 
race,  asking  for  penance  :  *  he  was  strong,  and  could  even  fast  a  whole 
week.'  '  Do  so  for  three  days,'  said  the  adviser, '  and  then  1  will  return 
and  tell  you  what  more  to  do.'  He  never  returned,  being  called  away  into 
Ireland.  Adamnan,  left  to  himself,  took  to  fasting  on  all  but  two  days  in 
the  week,  Sunday  and  Thursday  ;  Bede,  iv.  25.  So,  it  was  afterwards 
believed,  did  St.  Adamnan  of  Hy ;  Reeves's  Adamn.  p.  Ivii.  Bede  mentions 
a  priest  named  Haemgils,  who,  when  he  wrote,  was  an  old  man  living  on 
bread  and  water,  as  a  hermit  in  Ireland  ;  v.  12.  In  the  Life  of  St.  Guthlac 
by  Felix,  c.  32,  an  English  attendant  on  bishop  Heddi  says  '  inter 
Scottorum  se  populos  habitasse  et  illic  pseudo-anachoretas  .  .  .  vidisse,' 
together  with  truly  devout  men ;  Act.  SS.  Bened.  iii.  278.  On  Irish 
penances,  see  above,  p.  168. 

*  An  unknown  person,  he  said,  stood  by  him  during  his  nightly 
devotions,  and  told  him  that  he  alone  in  the  whole  community  was  in 
earnest  about  his  soul.  'The  cells  made  for  prayer  or  study  were  turned 
into  places  for  revelry,  idle  conversation,  or  other  allurements.'  Monks  and 
nuns  alike  *  aut  somno  torpent  inerti  aut  ad  peccata  vigilant.'  Nuns,  in 
particular,  spent  their  time  in  weaving  delicate  garments  in  which  to 
adorn  themselves  '  like  brides,'  &c. 


Death  of  Wulfhere,  291 

strange  prophecy,  some  amendment  was  observable,  which,  chap.  ix. 
when  Ebba  was  gone,  gave  place  to  the  old  sins,  and  worse. 
And  so,  Bede  tells  us,  with  his  habitual  awe-struck  recog- 
nition of  Divine  judgements  \  'while  they  said,  "Peace  and 
safety,"  the  convent  was  burnt  to  the  ground  through  some 
person's  carelessness,  but,'  as  *  all  who  kn^w  the  case  could 
well  perceive,'  by  '  a  heavy  vengeance  from  heaven  ^Z 

And  now  let  us  turn  southward,  and  place  ourselves,  in  Mercia. 
imagination,  among  the  Churchmen  of  Kent  attached  more 
or  less  closely  to  the  archbishop,  and  thus  informed  as  to 
ecclesiastical  affairs  in  the  southern  and  central  kingdoms. 
They  would  hear  a  good  deal  about  the  state  of  the  Church 
in  Mercia.  King  Wulfhere,  after  losing  Lindsey  in  his 
war  with  Egfrid^,  and  gaining  some  dearly-bought  ad- 
vantage over  Escwin,  then  king  of  a  part  of  Wessex,  in  the 
battle  of  Beadanhead  or  Bedwin  ^,  ended  his  noble  life  in 
675  ^,  leaving  the  Church  firmly  settled  in  the  Midlands : 
and  his  son  Kenred,  being  a  boy,  was  passed  over  in  favour 
of  his  father's  brother  Ethelred  ^,  another  of  those  sons  of 
the  great  Pagan  whom  Christianity  had  made  so  effectually 

^  *  Lest,  while  we  are  yielding  to  the  allurements  of  the  flesh,  repentina 
ejus  ira  nos  corripiat.*     Comp.  Bede,  iv.  3,  v.  13,  14,  and  Epist.  15. 

"^  It  is  said  that  on  account  of  these  scandals  at  Coldingham,  Cuthbert, 
when  bishop  of  Lindisfarne,  witli  full  '  consent  of  men  and  women,* 
excluded  all  women  *  from  the  threshold '  of  his  monastic  cathedral  (see 
Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  215),  and  that  a  separate  church  was  built  on  the 
island  *  in  campi  viventis  planitie,'  thence  called  the  Green  Kirk.  De 
Dun.  Eccl.  ii.  7 ;  cp.  Ann.  SS.  Ben.  ii.  878  ;  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  215. 
In  Durham  cathedral  women  could  not  go  further  up  the  nave  than 
a  cruciform  line  of  blue  stone  west  of  the  north  door. 

'  Bede,  iv.  12  ;  see  above,  p.  267.  Lindsey  was  a  '  debatable  land ' 
between  Mercia  and  Northumbria,  but  finally  became  Mercian. 

*  Chron.  675.  For  Escwin,  see  above,  p.  273.  On  the  result  of  the 
battle,  cp.  Hen.  Hunt.  ii.  37. 

*  On  his  reign  see  Smith's  Bede,  p.  746  ;  Lappenberg,  i.  178.  His  chief 
fault  was  the  unworthy  transaction  with  bishop  Wini  ;  but  against  this 
are  to  be  set  his  exertions  for  Christianity,  not  only  within  his  own 
realm,  but  in  regard  to  the  South-Saxon  king.  '  Christi  nomen  ubique 
locorum  regni  sui  praedicare  jussit ; '  Florence,  a.  675.  'Christianitatem 
vix  in  regno  suo  palpitantem  .  .  .  enixissime  juvit  ;'  Malmesb.  G.  Reg.  i. 
76.  He  was  buried  at  Lichfield.  After  his  death  his  wife  Ermenild  took 
the  veil  at  Sheppey,  and  his  daughter  Werburga  (above,  p.  207^)  at  Ely. 

"  See  above,  p.  180.  So  among  the  Picts,  *  the  law  of  primogeniture  was 
only  partially  recognized  ; '  Robertson,  Scotland  under  Early  Kings,  i.  34. 

U   2 


292  Erkenwaldy  bishop  of  London^ 

CHAP.  IX.  its  own.  The  vacancy  of  the  Mercian  throne  was  con- 
temporaneous with  the  vacancy  of  the  Mercian  bishopric : 
Winfrid  was  deposed  by  Theodore  for  some  '  disobedience  \' 
w^hich  is  not  explained  by  Bede,  but  has  been  supposed 
to  mean  resistance  to  a  partition  of  the  great  diocese  of 
Lichfield.  Gentle  as  Winfrid  was  by  nature,  he  may 
perhaps  have  thought  himself  bound  by  reverence  for 
Chad's  memory  to  retain  Chad's  diocese  as  he  had  received 
it.  Whether  Theodore  went  through  the  form  of  a  synodical 
trial  and  sentence,  we  know  not ;  he  would  be  somewhat 
too  likely  to  disregard  such  restrictions  on  his  authority  ^ : 
but  Winfrid  made  no  resistance,  uttered  no  appeal.  He 
retired  to  the  monastery  of  Barrow,  which  seems  to  have 
been  under  his  own  personal  jurisdiction  :  and  after  some 
experiences  on  the  continent,  which,  as  we  shall  see,  were 
almost  grotesquely  unfortunate,  he  ended  his  life,  under 
the  peaceful  roof  of  his  own  convent,  'in  all  holy 
conduct'"^.'  He  was  succeeded  by  Saxulf,  the  abbot,  and, 
in  a  sense,  the  founder  of  Medeshamstede  *,  who,  after 
having,  as  the  monastic  chronicler,  Hugh  the  White, 
assures  us,  'given  birth  to  several  dependent  monas- 
teries,' left  the  parent  house  in  the  care  of  a  monk  named 
Cuthbald  \ 
Erken-  '  At  that  time  also,'  writes  Bede,  '  Theodore  appointed 

Mshopof    Erkenwald  to  be  bishop,  in  the  city  of  London,  for  the 

London. 

^  Bede,  iv.  6 :  '  Per  meritum  cujusdam  inobedientiae.'  Malmesbury 
says  that  he  was  expelled  from  Lichfield  by  king  Ethelred,  '  quia  Egfridi 
partium  f uerat '  (G.  Pont.  iii.  looj  ;  but  this  would  place  the  expulsion  in 
679,  whereas  Saxulf  succeeded  to  Lichfield  *  not  long  after'  the  council  of 
Hertford  fBode,  iv.  6),  and  probably  in  675  (Stubbs,  Registr.  p.  3\  '  He 
was  unbuxum  (disobedient)  in  som  poynt ; '  Tre visa's  transl,  of  Polychron. 

b.  I.  c.  55. 

^  He  acted  '  pro  placito ' ;  Malmesb.  Gest.  Pontif.  i.  i.  See  Collier,  i. 
239.  Bingham  says  that  even  if  a  metropolitan  could  depose  a  suffragan 
by  his  sole  authority,  the  act  was  subject  to  revision  by  the  synod  ;  b.  ii. 

c.  16.  s.  16.     '  Occasionally  he  (Theodore)  ventured  to  transgress  the  strict 
letter  of  the  canons  ;*  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch,  i.  78. 

^  Bede,  iv.  6  :  '  Depositus  vero  Vynfrid,'  &c. 

*  'Constructor  et  abbas,'  Bede,  1.  c.     Above,  p.  204. 

*  He  had  founded  a  monastery  'cum  heremiticis  cellulis'  at  a  place 
called  Ancarig,  afterwards  Thorney,  in  Cambridgeshire.  See  Hugo  Cand. 
in  Sparke,  Scr.  Varii,  pp.  6-8  ;  Sprott's  Chron.  ed.  Hearne,  p.  172. 


{ 


a  founder  of  Convents,  293 

East-Saxons  ^'  In  after  days,  when  this  prelate  was  chap.  jx. 
honoured  as  a  saint,  it  was  said  that,  when  a  little  boy,  he 
had  heard  Mellitus  preach  in  London  2.  Bede  has  much  to 
tell  us  of  the  '  two  noble  monasteries '  that  he  founded, 
before  his  episcopate,  for  himself  and  for  his  sister  Ethel- 
burga  •', — one  at  Chertsey  in  Surrey,  the  other  at  Barking 
in  Essex.  The  former  was  raised  by  the  help  of  Frith  wold, 
a  Mercian  sub-king  * :  the  latter,  like  Whitby  and  others, 
was  a  double  foundation,  having  a  separate  area  for  the 
monks  apart  from  the  nuns'  building,  and  even  a  separate 
chapel,  or  oratory,  for  each  order  ^.  Of  Barking  Bede 
gives  us,  on  the  authority  of  a  memoir  of  contemporary 
date,  a  series  of  anecdotes,  several  of  which  refer  to  the 
ravages  of  the  Yellow  Pest,  and  some  belong  to  the  class 
of  instances  of  mysterious  consciousness,  or  prevision,  shortly 
preceding  death  ^.  When  Bede  wrote,  men  believed  that 
the  horse-litter"^  in  which,  when  infirm,  Erkenwald  used 

'  Bede,  1.  c.  (he  writes  *  Erconvald.')  Alb.  Butler,  April  30.  Cp. 
Milman,  Ann.  of  St.  Paul's,  p.  11  ;  Simpson,  Chapters  in  Hist,  of  Old 
St.  Paul's,  p.  13.  Loftie  says  that  his  '  career  was  an  uninterrupted  course 
of  good,  useful,  and  farsiglited  measures,'  &c.,  and  '  his  festival  was  the  great 
day  of  all  the  year  at  St.  Paul's ' ;  London  (Historic  Towns),  pp.  150,  157. 

^  Dugdale,  Hist.  St.  Paul's,  p.  289. 

^  For  '^dilburge,'  as  Bede  wiites  her  name,  see  Alb.  Butler,  Oct.  11. 

*  Malmesb.  G.  Pontif.  ii.  73.  See  Monast.  Angl.  i.  426  ;  Frithwald  is 
called  *  Surrianorum  subregulus  regis  Wlfarii.'  A  description  of  the 
boundaries  of  Chertsey  abbey- land  traces  them  from  '  the  mouth  of  the 
Way  to  the  eels'  ditch,  the  old  military  way,  .  .  .  the  great  willow,  .  .  .  the 
head  of  the  pool,  the  old  spinney,  the  holm-oak,  the  three  hills,  .  .  .  the 
march-brook,  the  three  trees,'  &c.  Another  form  is  in  Kemble,  iii.  p.  401. 
Ethelburga  was  succeeded  by  Hildilith,  a  friend  of  Aldhelm  ;  comp.  Bede, 
iv.  10 ;  Aldh.  de  Laud.  Virgin,  i.  Tanner,  in  *  Notitia  Monastica,'  dates 
the  foundation  of  Chertsey,  from  its  register,  in  666. 

'  Bede,  iv.  7  :  '  Cujus  radius  lucis,*  &c.  Comp.  Mabillon,  Ann.  Bene- 
diet.  i.  397. 

^  One  story  is  of  a  vision,  at  dawn,  of  a  radiant  human  body  wrapt  in 
linen,  and  borne  up  by  cords  brighter  than  gold  out  of  the  *  house ' 
reserved  for  dying  sisters,—  shortly  before  the  death  of  Ethelburga ;  Bede, 
iv.  9.  In  this  passage  we  find  the  word  'pausare,'  'to  go  to  rest'  in 
death  ;  comp.  Bede,  v.  8.  In  Adamn.  Vit.  Col.  iii.  23  the  word  is  applied 
to  the  remains  of  the  dead,  'in  quo  .  .  .  sancti  pausant  ossa.*  Comp. 
Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  378,  '  Adomnanus  .  .  .  pausat,'  and  '  pausavit  * 
as  ^  '  quievit '  in  Chron.  Scot.  Bede  mentions  the  '  cottage'  of  the  sick  and 
dying  in  the  monastic  precinct  of  Whitby,  iv.  24. 

'  Bede,  iv.  6  :  '  Etenim  usque  hodie,'  &c.     Cp.  Malmesb.  G.  P.  ii.  73. 


294  Aldhelntj 

CHAP.  IX.  to  go  about  his  diocese,  was  invested  with  wonder-working 
efficacy ;  a  belief  which  could  not  have  grown  up  unless 
the  bishop  had  endeared  himself  to  his  people  by  true 
pastoral  and  self-sacrificing  activity,  such  as  would  go  far 
to  consolidate  the  fabric  of  Church-life  on  ground  that  had 
once  seemed  to  offer  no  sure  foundation. 
Aldhelm.  Another  event  of  675  would  call  forth  eager  interest  in 
the  precincts  of  the  ecclesiastical  school  in  Canterbury. 
One  of  the  students,  Aldhelm  ^,  a  youth  of  princely  West- 
Saxon  blood  2,  who  had  shown  a  pre-eminent  faculty  for 
acquiring  all  the  lore  of  the  time, — Greek  as  well  as  Latin, 
and  even  Hebrew, — together  with  music  and  metrical 
rules  ^,  and  had  astonished  even  such  a  teacher  as  Hadrian 
by  his  aptitudes  and  attainments*,  had  returned  into 
Wessex,  and  become  a  member  of  a  small  community  under 
the  teachinor  and  o:overnment  of  an  Irish  monk  named 
Mailduf  ^, — probably  Moeldubh,  — '  in  erudition  a  philo- 
sopher,' who  had  been  attracted  by  the  woodland  beauty 
of  a  peninsular  hill  named  Ingelborne,  had  obtained  leave 

^  Alb.  Butler,  May  25  ;  Turner,  Angl.-Sax.  iii.  400. 

^  Farieius,  abbot  of  Abingdon  (iioo),  who  wrote  his  Life  (Migne,  Patr. 
Lat.  Ixxxix.  65),  makes  him  the  nephew  of  king  Ine ;  a  manifest 
anachronism,  as  Malmesbury  obsei*ves, — who  adds  that  Aldhelm's  fatlier 
Kenten  was  a  kinsman,  not  a  brother,  of  Ine  ;  Gest.  Pontif.  v.  88.  See 
Elmham,  s.  84  :  '  Aldhelm  needs  not  to  have  his  lineage  supported  by 
falsehoods.'  Kemble  (ii.  373)  describes  him  as  '-  closely  connected  with 
the  royal  family  of  Wessex.' 

'  Bede  calls  him  a  man  most  learned  'all  round,  ...  a  wonder  of 
erudition  in  liberal  as  well  as  in  sacred  literature '  ;  v.  18.  See  his  Epist. 
4,  to  bishop  Heddi,  on  the  study  of  metre  and  of  calculations  ;  his  work 
'  De  Septenario,  et  de  Metris,'  &c.  ;  his  frequent  quotations  from  Latin 
poets.  Farieius  says  that  he  could  speak  and  write  Greek ;  Vit.  Aldh. 
c.  I.  See  Milner,  Hist.  Winch,  i.  82.  His  reading,  in  fact,  exceeded  his 
literary  discretion  and  good  taste.  We  must  not  wonder  at  his  believing 
that  St.  Clement  of  Rome  wrote  the  'Itinerarium  Petri,'  that  pope 
Sylvester  bound  a  pestilent  serpent,  or  that  Constantine  was  healed  of 
leprosy  by  being  baptized  ;  De  Laud.  Virg.  c.  25: 

*  Malmesb.  1.  c.  Aldhelm  refers  to  Theodore  as  having  personally  given 
instructions  ;  Ep.  3. 

^  Bede,  v.  18  ;  Malmesb.  v.  189 ;  Lanigan,  iii.  100.  An  Irishman 
*  ignoti  nominis  '  reminded  Aldhelm,  '  You  were  bred  up  under  a  certain 
holy  man  of  our  race  ; '  Ep.  5.  See  Newman  on  University  Education, 
p.  31  :  *  Blessed  days  of  peace  and  confidence  (between  England  and 
Ireland),  when  Mailduf  penetrated  to  Malmesbury,*  &c. 


abbot  of  Malmesbury,  295 

to  build  a  hut  beneath  the  walls  of  its  old  castle  ^,  and  chap,  ix. 
had  there  lived  by  monastic  rule,  and  taken  pupils  for  his 
subsistence.  He  brought  with  him  all  the  culture  for  which 
Irish  scholars  were  then  famous :  a  little  society  grew  up 
around  him ;  and  his  name  has  been  thought  to  survive  in 
'  Malmesbury  2.'  Aldhelm  had  returned  to  Canterbury,  but 
his  second  sojourn  there  was  broken  off  by  bad  health,  as 
we  learn  from  his  own  letter  to  Hadrian,  'the  revered 
preceptor  of  his  childhood^.'  He  returned  to  his  studies 
under  Mailduf ,  was  ordained  priest  by  Bishop  Lothere  *,  and 
in  675  was  regularly  appointed  abbot.  Better  days  now 
dawned  on  the  poor  and  hard-working  community.  They 
had  hardly  been  able  to  secure  daily  bread :  but  the  re- 
nown of  their  new  superior  put  an  end  to  these  straits  ^, 
and  a  crowd  of  new  brethren  bore  witness  to  his  attractive- 
ness as  an  instructor  and  a  spiritual  guide.  It  is  probable 
enough  that  one  or  another  great  landowner  came  forward 
to  assist  the  brotherhood  ^.  The  lowly  chapel  of  Mailduf 
was  superseded  by  '  a  more  august  church  in  honour  of  the 
Lord  and  Saviour,  and  of  the  chief  apostles  Peter  and  PauF.' 
One  incident  of  his  earlier  days   at   Malmesbury   brings 

^  *  Nemoris  amoenitate  .  .  .  captus ; '   Malm.  1.  c.  ;   Mon.  Angl.  i.  253, 

257. 

2  Bede,  v.  18  :  '  Maildufi  urbem.'  Mr.  James  Parker,  referring  to  *  Mel- 
dunonsburg'  in  Ine's  charter  of  701  (Cod.  Dipl.  i.  56),  suggests  '  Mael- 
dun,'  hill  of  the  cross  (properly,  mark),  as  '  Cristes  msele,'  Chron.  Abingd. 
i-  65,  338  (in  lists  of  boundaries). 

^  Aldh.  Ep.  7  :  '  corporeae  fragilitatis,'  &c.  In  Ep.  3  he  alludes  to 
Hadrian  as  *  urbanitate  enucleata  ineffabiliter  praedito.' 

*  Faricius,  c.  i.  The  grant  of  land  at  Malmesbury  by  Lothere  is  a 
manifest  forgery  ;  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  14. 

^  Malmesb.  G.  P.  v.  197  :  '  Correxit  nobilitas  Aldelmi  victualium  in- 
opiam.' 

^  Malmesb.  G.  P.  v.  200.  The  charter  ascribed  to  Kenfrith  is  very 
grandiloquent,  and  bespeaks  a  later  time.  That  of  king  Ethelred  is 
much  simpler  (Cod.  Dipl.  i.  27).  But  both  may  be  spurious,  and  yet  the 
tradition  of  some  such  grants  may  be  trustworthy.  One  in  which 
Baldred,  in  August  688,  gives  *  some  land  to  abbot  Aldhelm,'  is  referred 
by  Kemble  to  Cadwalla's  reign  ;  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  32. 

'  Malmesb.  G.  P.  v.  197.  He  afterwards  built  two  other  churches 
within  the  precinct,  St.  Mary's  and  St.  Michael's  ;  ib.  v.  216.  He  adds 
that  'tota  majoris  ecclesiae  fabrica'  subsisted  to  his  own  time,  surpassing 
all  other  ancient  English  churches  in  size  and  beauty.  He  was  writing 
in  I 125. 


296  A  Id  helm  as  a  minstrel. 

CHAP.  IX.  him  more  lovingly  before  us  than  all  the  panegyrics  on  his 
sanctity  or  his  manifold  acquirements,  or  on  that  style  which 
to  us  appears  so  full  of  turgid  affectations^,  although  to 
William  of  Malmesbury  it  seems  to  combine  the  several 
excellences  of  English,  Greek,  and  Latin  ^.  The  anecdote 
was  derived  from  no  less  an  authority  than  Alfred  the 
Great  ^.  It  seems  that  the  rude  West-Saxons  of  the  district 
were  wont  to  hasten  home  after  hearing  mass,  without 
waiting  for  the  sermon, — sometimes,  perhaps,  to  neglect 
church  altogether^.  Aldhelm,  who  had  learned  to  sing,  and 
to  compose  ballads,  while  a  student  at  Canterbury,  saw  his 
way  to  making  use  of  that  talent.  He  took  his  station  on 
the  bridge  which  crossed  the  Avon  southwards,  and  con- 
fronted the  passers-by  ^,  who  were  intent  on  their  market- 
ings, but,  like  all  Saxons,  were  fascinated  by  music  ^,  and 
stopped  when  he  began  a  lively  song  ^.  '  Having  done  this 
more  than  once,  and  gathered  a  crowd  of  listeners,'  he 
glided  from  such  minstrelsy  into  a  strain  that  brought  in 
sacred  words,  and  brought  home  serious  thoughts.  This 
'blameless   guile ^'   proved    effective,   where    ecclesiastical 


*  E.g.  Ep.  3,  or  the  De  Laudibus  Virginitatis,  c.  2,  12,  32.  Of  that 
work  Malmesbury  says,  'Nihil  dulcius,  nihil  splendidius  ; '  G.  Reg.  i.  3. 
His  pedantry  frequently  takes  a  classical  form  :  he  talks,  e.  g.  of  the 
*  dura  Parcarum  quies,'  and  calls  St.  Athanasius  a  '  sacred  flamen.'  He 
is  fond  of  Greek  words,  as  doxa,  sophia,  kata, — and  of  alliteration  ;  Ep. 
3.  *  Language  that  rivals  Ai'mado,  or  Holofernes,  or  Euphues  ; '  Haddan's 
Remains,  p.  267.  See  Turner,  Angl.-Sax.  iii.  403,  'a  series  of  bombastic 
amplifications  ;  *  and  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  152.  A  similar  '  Grecizing ' 
affectation  characterizes  many  of  the  Chartae  Anglo-Saxonicae  in  Kemble, 
e.  g.  '  Kyrius,  archon,  tauraate,  agie,  catascopus,'  &c.  See  also  the 
pomposities  of  Odo's  preface  to  Fridegod's  Life  of  Wilfrid. 

*  Malmesb.  G.  P.  v.  196  ;  and  Gest.  Reg.  i.  s.  31.  Bede  calls  Aldhelm 
'sermone  nitidus,'  v.  18  ;  praise  to  which  he  himself  is  far  better  entitled. 
See  Lingard,  ii.  153. 

^  Malmesbury,  v.  190,  referring  to  Alfred's  Handbook,  ib.  188.  Comp. 
Faricius,  c.  i  :  he  gives  it  with  some  variations." 

*  So  Faricius  :  *  ecclesiam  non  frequentabat.' 

^  According  to  Faricius,  he  met  them  as  they  were  flocking  into  the 
town  ;  according  to  Malmesbury  (or  rather,  Alfred),  when  they  were 
hastening  home  '  statim  cantatis  missis.'     See  above,  p.  115. 

^  See  the  story  of  Caedmon,  below.     Cp.  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  155. 

^  This  song  was  long  afterwards  popularly  current ;  Malmesb.  1.  c. 

*  Christian  Year,  Fifth  Sunday  after  Trinity. 


Heddty   bishop  of  Winchester,  ^(^^ 

censures  '  would  have  done  no  good  whatever  ^ ; '  and  his  chap.  ix. 
Pauline  versatility  was  rewarded  by  a  manifest  increase 
of  religious  earnestness  in  his  congregations. 

His  bishop  Lothere  died  in  the  year  following  his  own  Wessex. 
appointment  to  the  abbacy  ^ ;  and  Theodore,  in  London,  and 
doubtless  with  Erkenwald's  assistance,  consecrated  Heddi, 
who,  says  Bede,  was  qualified  for  episcopal  duties  rather  by 
an  innate  love  of  goodness  than  by  any  book-learning  ^,  but 
who  evidently  appreciated  the  abilities  and  the  character 
of  the  scholar-abbot,  for  we  find  Aldhelm  writing  to  him  as 
to  his  '  peculiar  patron,'  and  dilating  on  the  difficulties  of 
Roman  law,  of  prosody,  arithmetical  calculations,  astro- 
nomy and  astrology  *.  The  West- Saxon  realm  was  just  now 
in  a  '  somewhat '  chaotic  state  :  there  seem  to  have  been 
several  sub-kings, — one  of  them.  Esc  win  ' ,  more  potent  than 
the  rest,  but  no  one  acknowledged  by  all,  until  by  degrees 
Kentwin^',  a  brother   of  Eenwalch,  established   his   sove- 

^  '  Profecto  profecisset  nihil,'  Malmesb.  1.  c. 

^  See  Keinble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  i6,  for  a  charter  dated  on  Nov.  6  in  this 
year  676,  and  ascribed  to  '  Osric,  king,'  i.e.  sub-king,  of  the  Hwiccas.  He 
is  made  to  say  that  when  first  the  Gospel  doctrines  were  brought  home 
to  him  after  his  baptism,  he  had  confined  himself  to  the  erection  of 
a  'pontifical  chair':  but  that  he  has  'now'  resolved  to  found  '  coenobialia 
loca '  for  men  and  for  women,  and  grants  to  abbess  Bertana  land  near  the 
city  called  Hat  Bathu  (i.  e.  Bath,  called  Hata-Bathum  in  Chron.  a.  972}. 
But  the  document  exhibits  the  signatures  of  both  Lothere  and  his  successor 
Heddi,  whereas  Heddi  was  not  consecrated  in  Lothere's  lifetime  ;  Bede, 
iv.  12.  Osric  might  be  sub-king  as  early  as  676  :  he  was  so,  apparently, 
in  681,  when  he  is  said  to  have  founded  the  monastery  of  Gloucester  ;  and 
see  Bede,  iv.  23.  The  difficulty  caused  by  Florence's  mention  of  Oshere 
as  sub-king  in  679  might  be  got  over  :  he  probably  antedated  Oshere. 
But  the  matter  of  the  document  would  seem  to  show  that,  if  genuine,  it 
must  be  ascribed  to  a  later  year.  Bishop  Stubbs  thinks  Osric  may 
have  been  the  son  of  Alchfrid  son  of  Oswy,  and  the  uncle  of  Oshere  ;  Diet. 
Chr  Biogr.  iv.  J 60,  162. 

^  Bede,  v.  18:  'Bonus  quippe  erat,'  &c.  On  this  Malmesbury  says, 
*  Non  parvo  moveor  scrupulo,  quippe  qui  legerim  ejus  formales  epistolas 
non  nimis  indocte  compositas  ;'  G.  P.  ii.  75.  See  the  lines  addressed  to 
him,  and  ascribed  to  Theodore,  'Te  nunc,  sancte  speculator,'  &c.,  in 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  203. 

*  Aldh.  Ep.  4.  On  the  study  of  Roman  law  at  this  period,  see  Kemble, 
Cod.  Dipl.  i.  p.  viii.     Cp.  Eddi,  43,  on  Wilfrid's  proficiency  in  it. 

^  '  Nearest  to  the  royal  stock,'  says  Malmesbury,  G.  Reg.  i.  2.  For 
a  number  of  sub-kings  in  Wessex  fifty  years  earlier,  see  p.  130. 

*  Comp.  Bede,  iv.  12,  with  Chron.  676,  which  makes  Kentwin  succeed 


298  Foundation  of  Abingdon. 

CHAP.  IX.  reignty,  and,  although  an  elderly  man,  displayed  on  one 
occasion  the  warlike  energy  of  his  house  by  '  driving  the 
Britons  to  the  sea  ^.'  His  name  is  of  some  interest  to  us  in 
this  Thames  valley,  in  connexion  with  the  original  founda- 
tion of  the  great  abbey  of  St.  Mary  of  Abingdon.  For  it 
was  in  the  first  year  of  his  reign  that  Hean  2,  the  nephew 
of  the  sub-king  Cissa,  obtained  from  his  uncle  a  grant  of 
land  for  a  monastery  amid  the  '  Bagley-wood  '  of  that 
period,  on  a  spot  called  Abba's  hill^,  a  name  transferred 
some  twenty  years  later  to  Seukesham  *,  when,  after  many 
delays  ^,  the  design  was  carried  out  on  that  ground  near 

to  Escwin.  Some  verses  wrongly  ascribed  to  Aldhelm  describe  a  church 
founded  by  Bugge,  daugliter  of  Kentwin  (prob.  lect.)  during  the  reign 
of  Ine. 

^  Chron.  682.     *  Victoriosus  et  vehemens,'  Hen.  Hunt.  Hist.  ii.  38. 

2  Chron.  Abingd.  vol.  ii.  pp.  vii.  269.  Hean  is  said  to  have  been  stirred 
by  a  sermon  on  '  the  camel  and  the  needle's  eye.'  This  seems  an  imitation 
of  the  story  about  St.  Antony.  The  land  granted  by  Cissa  >vas  a  piece  of 
the  public  'folcland'  ;  ib.  pp.  xii.  497.  Hean's  sister  Ceolswith,  or  Cilia, 
actually  founded  a  nunnery  in  honour  of  St.  Helen  at  a  place  called 
Helenstow:  it  was  afterwards  removed  to  Wytham  ;  vol.  i.  8,  ii.  269. 

^  *  A  little  beyond  the  vill  called  Sunningwell,  between  two  very  lovely 
streams  which  enclose  the  spot  quasi  quemdam  sinum  ;'  Chron.  Ab. 
vol.  i.  p.  3.  In  other  words,  '  near  Bay  worth  ; '  ib.  ii.  268.  See  Tanner, 
Not.  Mon.  p.  10,  *  two  miles  nearer  Oxford  than  the  present'  Abingdon, 
'  near  Bay  worth,  or  Chilswell,'  where  Chilswell  farm  now  stands,  on  old 
property  of  the  abbey,  below  Hen- wood  (qu.  Hean's?).  The  tale  of 
an  Irish  (or  British)  monk  'Abben,'who  dwelt  on  the  'mount'  as  an 
abbot,  is  a  mere  legend  :  '  Abingdon  *  is  derived  from  Abba,  an  early 
settler  in  Berkshire  ;  Chron.  Ab.  ii.  p.  v.  The  story  mentions  '  a  hermit 
who  dwelt  in  Cumnor  wood '  ;  ib.  p.  270. 

*  Or  '  Sheovesham.'  The  Chronicle  describes  Seuekesham  as  '  civitas 
famosa,  .  .  .  divitiis  plena,'  surrounded  by  broad  green  meadows,  where 
were  found  traces  of  British  Christianity,  and  among  them  a  black  cross, 
which  no  one  could  profane  by  perjury  'sine  periculo  vitae,'  &c.  ;  i.  6,  7  ; 
and  which  became  the  palladium  of  the  abbey.  A  more  modest  account, 
tracing  it  to  Cilia,  is  in  ii.  269. 

5  See  Stevenson's  Chron.  Abingd.  i.  9,  for  the  alleged  charter  of  king 
Ine,  dated  699,  marked  as  spurious  by  Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  53,  but 
supposed  by  Stevenson  to  be  reducible  into  Component  parts,  which, 
taken  separately,  present  no  difficulties ;  Chr.  Ab.  ii.  496.  The  transac- 
tions, in  his  view,  were  as  follows  :  Cissa  grants  some  lands  to  Hean  for 
monastic  purposes  ;  Cadwalla,  when  king  of  Wessex,  grants  some  twenty 
'hydes'  (including  '  Cumnor  wood '),  which,  according  to  the  fragment 
of  his  charter  (ib.  i.  8),  he  had  measured  'partim  equitando,  partim 
navigando ' :  Ine  finds  that  Hean  has  not  complied  with  the  conditions 
of  Cissa's  grant,  revokes  it,  and  '  restores  the  land  to  the  commonwealth ' : 


i 


Mercian  Invasion  of  Kent.  299 

the  river  where  we  still  see  some  scanty  remains  of  the  chap,  ix 
once  stately  monastery  which  made  the  new  '  Abbendun,' 
our  Abingdon,  ecclesiastically  and  historically  important. 
Heddi  must  have  come  into  the  valley, — at  what  time,  we 
know  not,  but  probably  soon  after  his  consecration, — when 
he  removed  the  bones  of  St.  Birinus  from  Dorchester  to 
Winchester  ^,  in  token  that  the  West-Saxon  capital  was  now 
the  one  seat  of  the  West- Saxon  prelacy, — and  withal 
deprived  Dorchester  of  cathedral  rank. 

Kent  itself  was  now  to  feel  the  sharp  edge  of  an  invader's  Ethelred 
sword.  King  Lothere  had  given  some  offence  to  Ethelred  ^ ;  xJnf.^^ 
or,  perhaps,  Penda's  son  was  fired  with  the  passion  of  a 
conqueror.  He  came  down  on  the  weaker  kingdom  at  the 
head  of  a  hostile  force,  and  laid  waste  not  only  towns  or 
villages,  but  '  churches  and  monasteries,  without  respect  to 
piety  or  the  fear  of  God  3/  Even  in  Canterbury  some  alarm 
may  well  have  been  felt  for  the  archiepiscopal  church,  and 
for  the  abbey  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul,  which  had  recently 
obtained  a  'privilege'  from  Pope  Adeodatus,  denouncing 
spiritual  censures  against  all  who  should  disturb  it "".  But 
Rochester  was  actually  destroyed.  Its  bishop,  Putta,  was 
just  then  absent ;  but  on  hearing  of  the  disaster,  he  lost  all 
heart.  '  His  church  had  been  stripped  of  all  its  property, 
and  laid  desolate.'  The  simple-minded,  inactive  man  had 
no  spirit  or  energy  for  such  a  crisis.  He  withdrew  into 
Mercia, — into  the  very  country  whence  the  ravagers  had 
come, — attracted,  perhaps,  by  the  known  kindness  and 
munificence  of  Bishop  Saxulf,  who  gave   him   a  church, 

Hean  then  promises  that  there  shall  be  no  further  delay,  takes  the  vows 
of  a  monk,  and  appoints  an  unnamed  person  as  his  abbot  :  thereupon  Ine 
renews  the  grant.  But  within  five  years,  Hean,  with  his  abbot's  consent, 
cancels  this  arrangement,  and  is  absolved  from  his  vows,  a.d.  699.  The 
actual  establishment  of  the  monastery  took  place  some  years  later,  during 
Aldhelm's  episcopate.  The  Abingdon  Chronicler  did  injustice  to  Ine's 
motives,  vol.  i.  p,  9  ;  see  ii.  p.  xi. 

^  Bede,  iii.  7. 

^  See  Malmesb.  G.  P.  i.  35,  '  Nam  Ethelredus,'  &c. 

^  Bede,  iv.  12.     He  dates  this  in  676.     Compare  Hen.  Hunt.  ii.  38. 

*  Elmham,  p.  245.  Another  privilege,  professing  to  come  from  pope 
Agatho,  May  15,  675,  is  '  of  questionable  authenticity ' ;  Haddan  and 
Stubbs,  iii.  124.     See  above,  p.  113  ;  and  cp.  Freeman,  iv.  407. 


300  Ptitta  in  Herefordshire. 

CHAP.  IX.  and  a  small  piece  of  land  ^,  where  he  dwelt,  exercising 
his  ministry  in  quietness,  and,  according  to  Bede,  going 
about,  when  invited,  to  give  lessons  in  his  own  art  of 
choir-music.  This  does  not  point  to  the  regular  for- 
mation of  a  bishopric;  yet  Putta's  name  heads  the  list 
of  bishops  of  Hereford  ^.  We  may  assume  that  he  would 
not  refuse  to  perform  episcopal  functions  in  the  surrounding 
district  of  Hecana,  as  a  deputy  for  Saxulf  ^ ;  he  would  thus 
be  regarded  as  its  acting  chief  pastor,  and  in  later  traditions 
as  actually  its  first  bishop.  In  that  tranquil  home  beside  the 
Wye,  perhaps  where  now  the  venerable  cathedral  and  its 
dependent  buildings  give  a  special  charm  to  the  Hereford 
'  precinct*,'  Putta  spent  the  rest  of  his  life,  'never  thinking  at 
all '  of  a  return  to  Rochester,  where  his  successor  Cwichelm 
found  it  impossible,  for  lack  of  means,  to  maintain  himself, 
and  resigned  in  678,  when  Theodore  consecrated  Gebmund  ^. 
Cuthbert,  Once  more  let  us  look  northwards.  The  year  of  Ethelred's 
Lindis-  ^^^^  ^^  Kent,  and  Putta's  settlement  in  Hecana,  was  marked 
fame.  in  Northumbria  by  an  event  of  importance  in  the  life  of 
one  w^ho  was  gradually  becoming  the  typical  saint  of  that 
realm.  Cuthbert  had  been  removed  by  his  abbot  Eata  from 
Melrose  to  Lindisfarne,  'that  he  might  there  also  teach 
the  rule  of  monastic  perfection  with  the  authority  of  a  prior, 
and  set  it  forth  by  a  virtuous  example  ^.     He  improved  the 


^  'Agelli  non  grandis,*  Bede,  iv.  12. 

^  Florence,  append.  See  above,  p.  259.  The  name  of  Hereford,  '  the 
ford  of  the  army,'  records  the  passing  of  Saxon  forces  over  the  river 
to  attack  the  Welsh  borders  ;  Taylor's  Words  and  Places,  p.  268. 

'  See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  130.  It  is  true  that  '  i?ede  says  nothing 
about  Putta  as  a  bishop  of  Hereford '  (Phillott,  Dioc.  Hist.  Heref.  p.  9), 
and  that,  so  far  as  his  narrative  goes,  Putta  lived  in  Saxulf s  diocese  'as 
a  simple  priest '  (Plummer).  Florence  dates  his  death  in  688,  and  names 
as  his  first  successors,  Tyrhtel,  Torthere,  and  Wahlstod  ;  the  last  of  these  is 
mentioned  by  Bede,  v.  23,  as  'bishop  (in  731)  of  the  people  who  dwell 
beyond  the  Severn  westward.' 

*  Near  the  city  is  a  hamlet  named  '  Putstone,'  which  gives  a  title  to 
two  prebends  in  the  cathedral. 

^  Bede,  iv.  12. 

«  Bede,  iv.  27  ;  Vit.  Cuthb.  16  ;  De  Mirac.  S.  Cuthb.  14  ;  Vit.  Anon. 
1.  2  (Bede,  vol.  vi.  p.  367).  This  cannot  have  been  as  early  as  664, 
as  Raine  supposes  ;^St.  Cuthbert,  p.  17  ff.),  following  Simeon.  See  above, 
p.  216. 


Cuthbertj  prior  of  Lindisfarne.  301 

discipline  of  the  monastery  by  a  compilation  of  new  rules  ',  chap.  ix. 
drawn  up  at  Eata's  desire :  and  it  was  now  his  task  to  over- 
come the  repugnance  with  which  the  monks  regarded  what 
they  deemed  an  additional  burden.  Thus  he  had  to  face 
an  opposition,  on  the  part  of  daily  and  hourly  associates, 
which,  as  Bede  hints,  extended  to  some  bodily  ill-treatment  ^ ; 
which  would  have  certainly  worn  out  one  less  firm,  or 
exasperated  one  less  loving,  but  which  could  not  even  ruffle 
his  brow  or  sharpen  his  tones,  and  gradually  yielded  to 
the  sweet  power  of  his  '  modest  patience.'  '  When,  in  dis- 
cussions, he  was  harassed  by  insulting  language,  he  would 
suddenly  rise,  break  up  the  meeting,  and  go  out  with  a 
calm  face  ^  and  a  quiet  mind  :  on  the  very  next  day,  as  if 
he  had  met  with  no  gainsaying  whatever,  he  would  repeat 
again  the  same  exhortations,  until,  by  degrees,  he  brought 
them  round  to  what  he  desired.'  His  daily  conduct  was  a 
lesson  of  devotion  :  sometimes  he  spent  three  or  four  nights 
together  in  vigil  and  prayer,  without  ever  lying  down :  he 
was  either  alone  in  some  retired  place,  or  making  something 
with  his  hands  ^  while  he  recited  psalms  ^,  by  way  of  keep- 

^  The  author  of  the  Anonymous  Life  says,  '  Et  nobis  regularem  vitam 
j^rimum  componens  constituit,  quam  usque  hodie  cum  regula  Benedict! 
observamus '     Bed.  Op.  vi.  369.     See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  217. 

^  '■  Quae  vel  animo  vel  corpori  adversa  ingerebantur  ; '  Bede,  V.  C.  16. 

^  *  Placido  vultu.'  Further  on,  '  inter  tristia  .  .  .  faciem  praetendens 
hilarem.'  '  His  gentleness  and  firmness  .  .  .  proved  too  much  for  the 
malcontents  ...  A  difficult  antagonist :  he  would  not  dispute  ;  he  would 
not  quarrel  ;  but  he  would  be  obeyed  ; '  Christ.  Kemembr.  vol.  xxiii. 
p.  69.     The  Anon.  Vit.  omits  these  troubles. 

*  His  hands  were  '  large  and  broad  * ;  Bede,  iv.  31.  Compare  tlie  ancient 
monks'  habit  of  '  twisting  ropes  *  (Coteler.  Eccl.  Gr.  Mon.  i.  340)  or  weaving 
palm-leaves  into  baskets  ;  Sozomen,  vi.  29, 

^  References  to  the  devotional  use  of  the  Psalter  are  frequent  in  Bede. 
Thus,  the  monks  of  Hexham  used  to  keep  vigil  with  'plurima  psalmorum 
laude,'  at  '  Heavenfield,'  on  the  night  before  the  anniversary  of  St.  Oswald's 
death  ;  Bede,  iii.  2.  Psalms  were  said  for  the  soul  of  Hilda,  iv.  23  :  cp. 
V.  14.  The  Hewalds  were  '-  constantly  occupied  in  psalms  and  prayers '  ; 
V.  10.  For  Cuthbert's  psalmody  see  Vit.  Cuthb.  5,  34.  Psalms  were  sung 
in  Benedict  Biscop's  cell  during  his  last  illne.ss  ;  Hist.  Abb.  9.  Bede  spent 
a  large  part  of  his  last  days  '  in  psalmorum  cantu  '  ;  see  Cuthbert's  letter 
to  Cuthwin.  The  custom  was  carried  to  excess  when,  e.g.  Ceolfrid  and 
his  companions  recited  the  whole  psalter  twice  a  day,  beside  the  psalms 
of  the  hours,  on  their  Romeward  journey;  Hist.  Abb.  16:  or  when  the 
English- born  Willehad  almost  always  sang  'one  psalter'  a  day,  sometimes 


302  Cuthbert^  prior  of  Lmdtsfarne, 

CHAP.  IX.  ing  off  sleepiness,  or  going  about  the  island  to  see  that  all 
was  well.  If  any  of  the  monks  complained  of  being  dis- 
turbed in  their  nightly  or  noonday  slumber,  he  would 
say  pleasantly, '  I  am  never  annoyed  by  being  aroused  to  do 
or  think  of  something  useful  ^'  When  he  celebrated,  'it  was 
rather  his  heart  than  his  voice  that  was  uplifted '  at  the 
'  Sursum  corda ' :  nor  could  he  ever  complete  the  service 
without  tears  ^.  As  an  administrator  of  discipline,  his  zeal 
for  what  was  right  became  sternness  towards  all  who  were 
doing  wrong :  but  honest  confession  awakened  all  his 
sympathy,  and  the  penitent  would  be  drawn  into  better 
ways  by  a  renewed  experience  of  such  tenderness  united  to 
such  holiness^.  He  used  garments  neither  too  smart  nor 
slovenly ;  and  his  proscription  of  rich  colours  became  a 
tradition  among  the  Lindisf  arne  monks  *.  As  at  Melrose,  he 
found  work  to  do  among  the  country  people,  and  '  by  his 
frequent  visits,  as  his  custom  was,  he  stirred  up  many  to 
seek  after  a  heavenly  reward.'  Stories  were  told,  as  in  his 
earlier  life,  about  wonderful  effects  from  his  prayers^. 
Altogether,  he  seemed  to  be  eminently  the  man  for  the  place  : 
yet  after  several  years  thus  spent,  he  took  a  step  which  must 
seem  strange  to  us,  though  to  the  men  of  his  time  it  appeared 
to  be  the  very  crown  of  contemplative  and  ascetic  perfection. 
In  676  ^,  when  he  was  about  forty-five,  he  gave  up  his  duties 


even  two  or  three  ;  Vit.  S.  Will.  9.     Compare  Bede,  iii.  27,  on  the  amount 
of  Egbert's  psalmody. 

*  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  16 :  '  Nemo  .  .  .  mihi  molestiam  facit  me  excitando 
de  somno,'  &«.  It  was  usual  for  monks  to  sleep  for  awhile  before  or  after 
the  matin  service  ;  comp.  Bede,  v.  9.  St.  Liudger  used  to  sleep,  after  the 
'psalmody  '  of  nocturns,  in  a  '  solar  '  of  the  church  of  Utrecht  ;  Vit.  Liudg. 
16.     See  too  Benedict's  Reg.  Mon.  c.  22,  48. 

^  Bede,  V.  C.  16.     The  celebration  was  still,  as  in  Aidan's  time,  con- 
fined to  Sundays  ;  ib.  44.     See  above,  p.  167. 
^  Bede,  1.  c.  :  *Erat  zelo  justitiae  fei-vidus,'  &c. 

*  Bede,  1.  c.  :  '  Vestimentis  utebatur  communihus,'  &c.    Above,  p.  269. 
=  Bede,  V.  C.  15. 

*  Simeon,  de  Dun.  Eccl.  i.  7,  gives  this  date.  It  appears,  indeed,  that 
Simeon  antedates  his  coming  to  Lindisfarne  by  some  years  ;  but  he  may 
be  right  as  to  the  time  of  his  resignation,  as  having  taken  place  in  676, 
and  in  the  third  year  before  the  consecration  of  Eata,  which  was  late 
in  678.  Bede  assigns  to  him,  vaguely,  'many'  years  of  priorship  both 
at  Melrose  and  at  Lindisfarne  ;  V.  C.  16,  17. 


He  retires  to  Fame,  303 

as  prior  of  Lindisfarne,  in  order  to  live  as  a  '  recluse '  on  chap.  ix. 
the  neighbouring  islet  of  Fame,  which  Aidan  had  used  for  ^^^^^l"^ 
his  periodical  retreats  ^  His  biographers  regarded  him  as  Fame. 
'  having  thus  chosen  the  better  part  ^  ' ; — as  if  he  had  not 
proved  his  own  signal  capacities  for  that  union  of  service 
and  of  devotion  which  he  had  enjoyed  while  dwelling  in  a 
community.  The  unhealthy  extravagance  into  which  the 
ecclesiastical  mind  of  that  age  was  led,  on  such  subjects,  by 
the  accumulating  influences  of  its  hagiology,  mingles  with 
the  good  sense  which  such  a  writer  as  Bede  exhibits  on 
other  matters.  No  one,  apparently,  remonstrated  with 
Cuthbert :  every  one  thought  he  was  doing  the  very  thing 
which  would  make  him  still  more  pleasing  to  God.  He 
himself,  however,  was  accustomed  after  his  retirement  to 
warn  his  friends  against  an  exaggerated  estimate  of  his 
hermit-life,  and  to  extol  as  truly  admirable  the  life  of 
obedient  monks  in  a  community  ^.  It  was  for  his  own 
special  profit,  as  he  viewed  it,  that  he  determined  to  live 
in  solitude :  and  accordingly,  he  took  up  his  abode  in  an 
island  which  had  never  before  been  regularly  inhabited  *, 
and  constructed  for  himself  a  round  hut  roofed  with  logs 

^  See  above,  p.  162. 

^  So  Sim.  Dunelm.  :  *  O  pater  dulcissime  .  .  .  sedebas  cum  Maria  secus 
pedes  Domini,  optimam  partem  eligens.'  (Comp.  Life  of  St.  Deicolus,  16, 
Act.  SS.  Ben.  ii.  108,  much  to  the  same  purport.)  Bede  (Vit.  Cuth.  17) 
considers  that  he  was  thereby  advancing  '  de  virtute  in  virtutem.'  Before 
retiring  to  Fame  he  spent  some  time  in  '  a  secluded  place  in  the  outskirts 
of  the  monastery  ("  cellae  ")  of  Lindisfarne ' ;  Bede,  1.  c.  ;  evidently  this,  his 
first  essay  at  hermit-life  was  made  in  a  cave  bearing  his  name  near 
Howburn  ;  Kaine's  St.  Cuthbert,  p.  20.  Probably  it  was  in  some  remote 
part  of  Holy  Island,  such  as  that  to  which  his  successor  retired  for 
Lenten  devotions  ;  Bede,  V.  C.  42 :  Skene  says,  in  the  S.  W.  corner,  Celt. 
Sc,  ii.  211.  Irish  monasteries  sometimes  had  'diserts'  or  places  for 
solitary  devotion  :  there  was  one  such  at  Derry,  and  near  the  shore 
in  Hy  ;  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  366.  Cp.  Stokes,  Irel.and  Celt.  Ch.  p.  178. 
Fiacc  is  said  to  have  spent  the  time  from  '  Shrove  Saturday  *  '  to  Easter 
Saturday '  (i.  e.  Easter  Eve)  in  a  cave  ;  Tripartite  Life  of  St.  Pcitrick,  i.  243. 

^  '  Ne  conversationem  ejus  quasi  singulariter  excelsam  mirarentur  .  .  . 
*•'■  Sed  jure,"  inquit,  '^  est  coenobitarum  vita  mirabilis  .  .  .  quorum  pluri- 
mos  novi  meam  parvitatem  longe  .  .   .  anteire  ; "  *  Bede,  V.  C.  22. 

*  See  Raine's  St.  Cuthbert,  p.  20  ff. ;  Murray's  Durham  and  Northum- 
berland, p.  212.  It  is  '  a  little  island  of  basaltic  rock  ' ;  Green,  Making  of 
Engl.  p.  378  ;  see  Bede,  iv.  28.  It  is  referred  to  in  several  passages  of 
Reginald  of  Durham's  'Libellus  de  S.  Cuthberto.*     (^Surtees  See.) 


304  Hermit-life  of  Cuthbert. 

CHAP.  IX.  and  straw :  its  wall,  made  of  huge  stones  and  turf,  rose 
externally  above  a  man's  height,  but  internally  was  sunk 
much  deeper, '  so  that  the  pious  inhabitant  might  see  nothing 
but  the  sky  ^'  The  cottage,  as  Bede  once  calls  it  ^,  had 
two  compartments,  one  of  which  served  as  an  oratory  ^ : 
and  one  window,  which  looked  to  the  west.  In  the  centre, 
with  the  help  of  Lindisfarne  monks,  he  dug  a  pit,  which 
next  morning  appeared  like  a  well  full  of  water,— of  water, 
it  was  thought,  miraculously  produced  from  the  hard  rock  *. 
A  larger  hut,  for  visitors  ^,  was  built  at  the  landing-place, 
looking  towards  Lindisfarne,  with  a  spring  of  water  near 
at  hand.  Cuthbert,  at  first,  used  to  leave  his  cell  in  order 
to  greet  his  brethren,  and  wash  their  feet  with  warm  water  ^, 
a  service  which  they  sedulously  returned.  They  used  to 
supply  him  with  bread,  until,  in  order  not  to  burden  the 
monastery,  he  made  them  bring  him  some  instruments  of 
husbandry,  and  some  grain : — wheat,  when  sown,  did  not 
come  up,  but  in  the  next   year  barley  answered  better  '^. 

'  Bede,  Y.  C.  16  :  '  Quatenus  .  .  .  plus  incola  nil  .  .  .  praeter  coelum 
posset  intueri.'  Or,  as  in  iv.  28,  '  coelum  tantum  .  .  .  cujus  introitum 
sitiebat,'  &c. 

"^  '  Casula,'  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  27.  In  c.  18,  Huguriunculum,'  'mansio,' 
or  '  monasterium '  ;  cp,  iv.  28,  'mansionem  angustam.'  On  this  cell,  see 
Anderson,  Scotland  in  Early  Christian  Times,  p.  125. 

^  In  Vit.  Cuthb.  46,  Bede  speaks  of  its  walls  as  '  iahulis  minus  diligenter 
coaptatis  compositi.'  It  looked  southwards  :  he  afterwards  erected  a  cross 
outside  it,  and  placed  under  the  turf,  to  the  north  of  it,  a  sarcophagus  given 
him  by  the  abbot  Cudda,  ib.  37.  On  the  site  stands  a  chapel  of  St.  Cuthbert, 
probably  700  years  old,  fitted  up  for  service,  which  is  performed  *  about 
twice  a  year';  Murray's  Durham  and  Northumberland,  p.  213. 

*  The  water  never  failed,  and  never  '  flooded  the  pavement '  ;  Vit. 
Cuthb.  18  ;  cp.  iv.  28. 

'^  '  Major  domus,' Vit.  Cuthb,  17.  He  had  himself  been  hospitaller  at 
Ripon.  See  above,  p.  215.  There  was  such  an  office  at  Lindisfarne ; 
Bede,  iv.  31  :  cp.  Vit.  Cuthb.  39,  44.  There  were  'guest-houses'  in  Irish 
monasteries,  as  at  Armagh ;  see  Reeves's  Adamnan,  pp.  157.  345,  361. 
See,  too,  the  rule  of  St.  Benedict,  c.  53,  that  guests  who  arrive  'tanquam 
Christus  suscipiantur.' 

*  Cp.  Adamnan,  Vit.  Col.  i.  4.  He  very  seldom  took  off  his  leather 
buskins.  Bede  says  that  he  kept  them  one  year,  from  Easter  to  Easter, 
save  for  the  solemn  feet-washing  on  Maundy  Thursday  ;  Vit.  Cuthb.  18. 

^  '  Adferte,  rogo,  hordeum,  si  forte  vel  illud  fructum  facere  possit.' 
Vit.  Cuthb.  19,  He  had  promised  them  that  if  he  could  not  grow  corn 
for  his  own  food,  he  would  return  to  Lindisfarne :  Bede,  iv.  28,  *  Si  mihi 
Divina  gratia,'  &c. 


Ciithbert's  hermit-life,  305 

To  his  brethren  these  visits  must  have  been  landmarks  in  chap.  ix. 
their  life  ^ :  but  other  friends  came  to  see  him,  as  Herbert, 
a  hermit  on  an  isle  in  Der  went  water,  who  paid  him 
a  yearly  visit  to  enjoy  his  '  salutary  instructions  ^.'  And 
beside  these,  from  distant  parts  of  Britain  came  strangers 
to  tell  him  of  their  private  troubles, '  and  no  man  took  home 
with  him  the  sorrow  that  he  brought.'  Cuthbert  knew  well  . 
how  to  cheer  the  afflicted  with  thoughts  of  heaven,  or  of 
the  fleetingness  of  earthly  evil  or  good :  he  could  '  describe 
to  the  tempted  the  various  lures  which  might  ensnare  a  soul 
destitute  of  love  for  God  or  for  the  brethren,  but  which 
a  soul  strong  in  perfect  faith  could  pass  through  like  a 
spider's  web  ^ ' :  '  his  speech,  seasoned  with  salt,  was  wont  • 
to  instruct  the  ignorant,  reconcile  those  who  were  at  variance, 
and  make  all  feel  that  nothing  was  to  be  preferred  to  the 
love  of  Christ  *.'  True  it  is,  that  the  account  of  those  nine 
years  in  Fame  cannot  stop  here  :  solitude  acted  on  Cuthbert 's 
nerves  and  imagination  as  it  had  done  on  those  of  other 

^  According  to  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  8,  he  used  to  tell  them  that  if  he  were 
on  a  rock  in  the  midst  of  the  ocean,  hidden  from  all  men's  view,  he  should 
still  not  think  himself  free  from  the  snares  of  the  world  and  the  love 
of  money.  And  Bede  (Vit.  Cuthb.  27)  gives  a  striking  story,  which  Cuthbert 
had  told  in  a  sermon  at  Carlisle.  One  Christmas  day,  some  Lindisfarne 
monks  came  over  to  Fame,  and  begged  him  to  leave  his  cell,  and  spend 
the  *  solemn  and  joyful  day '  with  them  in  the  guest-house.  He  con- 
sented ;  and  they  all  sat  down  to  their  Christmas  dinner,  in  the  midst  of 
which,  as  if  stirred  by  an  inward  impulse,  be  began  to  talk  of  watchful- 
ness against  trials.  The  monks  thought  there  was  a  time  for  all  things  : 
'■  Do  let  us  spend  this  day  in  gladness  ;  it  is  our  Lord's  birthday.'  '  Well,' 
said  he,  'we  will  do  so.'  Presently,  while  they  were  enjoying  themselves 
'  epulis  et  fabulis,'  he  was  again  moved  to  speak  of  preparing  for  trials. 
The  poor  monks  became  a  little  impatient  ;  they  thought  the  advice  good, 
but  inopportune  :  '  We  have  more  than  enough  days  for  fast  and  vigil ; 
today  let  us  rejoice  in  the  Lord,  in  memory  of  the  great  joy  for  all 
people.'  '  Very  well,'  he  said.  But  when,  once  more,  the  irrepressible 
warning  broke  from  his  lips,  they  felt  that  it  meant  something,  and  said, 
'  Let  us  do  as  you  say.'  He  declared  afterwards  that  he  knew  no  more 
than  they  did  of  any  approaching  trouble  ;  but  when  they  returned  home, 
they  found  one  of  their  brethren  dead  of  the  pestilence,  which  raged  for 
nearly  a  year  afterwards,  carrying  off  the  majority  of  that  '  noble  society.' 
'And  now,  brethren,' Cuthbert  concluded,  *  do  you  also  be  watchful  in 
prayer,  that  if  any  tribulation  should  come  upon  you,  it  may  find  you 
ready  to  meet  it.' 

2  Bede,  V.  C.  28  ;  cp.  Bede,  iv.  29.  3  Bede,  V.  C.  2a. 

*  Anon.  Vit.  Bed.  Op.  vi.  372. 

X 


3c6  Cuthbert's  hermit-life, 

CHAP.  IX.  hermits  ^  and  conjured  up  phantoms  of  visible  fiendish 
assault ;  and  as  time  went  on  in  that  wild  and  grim  retreat  ^, 
the  morbid  element,  in  his  devotion  became  stronger ;  he 
would  not  come  forth  on  the  arrival  of  visitors,  he  would  but 
look  at  them  through  the  window;  at  last  he  even  kept 
this  closed,  save  when  his  blessing  was  expressly  besought  '^. 
Enough  of  this  :  yet  let  us  remember,  in  order  to  do  justice 
to  a  phenomenon  which  to  us  may  bear  a  fanatical  aspect, 
that  the  hermit-life  of  Cuthbert  was  to  the  rude  minds 
around  him  an  impressive  representation  of  spiritual 
power  ^,  and  was  largely  overruled  for  the  comfort  of 
many  a  sore  heart  which  would  not  otherwise  have  come 
•  under  his  ministry.  Nor  did  it  impair  his  gentleness, 
his  lowliness,  his  habitual  brightness  of  countenance  and 
temper  ^  Still,  when  all  this  is  said,  we  must  still  think 
that  he  was  less  truly  a  saint  while  dwelling  in  Fame 
than  when,  at  Lindisfarne  or  at  Melrose,  he  *  lived  according 
to  Holy  Scripture,  leading  the  contemplative  vjithin  the 
active  life  ^.' 
Wear-  Passing  on,  in  imagination,  further  south,  we  reach  that 

domain,  situated  on  the  north  bank  of  the  Wear  "^j  which 
King  Egfrid  had  granted  to  Benedict  Biscop  on  his  return 
from  his  fourth  visit  to  Rome.  The  grant  was  made  out  of 
the  king's  private  property^ :  the  land  was  simply  transferred 

*  See  the  Life  of  Antony,  ascribed  to  St.  Athanasius,  q.  g:  ^v  6  r ottos 
(v6vs  ir€Tr\rjpwfji€Vos  (pavraaias  Xcovtojv  apfcrajv  .  .  .  ,  and  for  St.  Guthlac,  below, 
c.  xii. 

^  Compare  Bede,  v.  i,  for  the  sounds  which  a  dweller  on  Fame  would 
often  hear,  *  fragore  procellarum  ac  ferventis  oceani  ; '  and  Reginald, 
Libell.  31. 

3  Bede,  V.  C.  i8,  end. 

*  See  Kingsley,  The  Roman  and  the  Teuton,  p.  i8o. 

^  Anon.  Vit.  C.  :  *  Omni  hora  hilaris  et  laetus  ; '  Bed.  Op.  vi.  372.  See 
Reginald  on  Cuthbert*s  taming  the  eider-ducks  until  they  allowed  him  to 
stroke  them,  and  nestled  trustfully  in  his  bosom,  Libell.  27.  Raine  describes 
the  dalmatic  in  which  his  bones  were  found  wrapt  as  having  eider-ducks 
embroidered  on  it  ;  St.  Cuthbert,  p.  194.  On  his  fondness  for  these 
creatures  cf.  Kingsley,  Hermits,  p.  295  ;  and  compare  Guthlac,  below,  and 
Columba  bidding  farewell  to  his  white  horse,  and  Columban  fondling 
squirrels,  &c.     Above,  p.  289. 

«  Anon.  Vit.  C.     Bed.  Op.  vi.  369. 

'  See  Surtees,  Hist,  and  Antiq.  of  Durham,  ii.  2. 

*  *  De  suo  largitus  ; '  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  4. 


Foundation  of  Wearmouth,  307 

as  *  booklancl/  or  land  held  under  charter  ^,  to  Benedict,  with  chap.  ix. 
the  injunction  to  raise  on  it  a  monastery  in  honour  of 
St.  Peter.  The  foundation  is  dated  in  674  ^ :  a  year  later, 
Benedict  made  a  special  journey  to  Gaul  in  order  to  obtain 
skilled  masons,  such  as  he  could  not  find  nearer  home,  for 
the  erection  of  the  abbey  church.  In  this  he  was  aided  by 
a  friend,  an  abbot  named  Torthelm  ^ ;  the  church,  '  built  of 
stone  after  the  Roman  fashion,  which  the  founder  always 
loved  ^,'  rose  with  great  rapidity :  when  it  was  nearly 
finished,  he  sent  for  Frankish  glaziers,  who  not  only  glazed 
the  windows  of  the  church  ^,  cloisters,  and  refectory,  and 
made  lamps  and  vessels  for  the  church,  but  taught  their 
craft  to  the  Northumbrians  *^,  and  so  far  contributed  to 
English  civilization.  All  the  furniture  and  vestments 
*  which  Benedict  could  not  procure  at  home,  he  took  care  to 
purchase  abroad"^.'  It  must  have  been  a  stirring  time  at 
Wearmouth  while  the  works  were  in  progress,  and  new 
products  of  foreign  art  were  continually  coming  in.  So 
energetic,  and  so  well  served,  was  Benedict,  that  he  found  it 
possible  to  roof  in  the  church,  and  to  use  it  for  mass  within 
one  year  from  the  foundation  ^.  The  rule  for  the  brethren 
was  framed  by  Benedict,  probably  from  that  of  Lerins,  but 
certainly  with  reference  to  whatever  seemed  best  in  the 
customs  of  all  those  seventeen  '  very  ancient '  monasteries 
which  he  had  visited  during  his  travels  ^.     The  system  of 

^  As  opposed  to  '  folkland,*  which  is  now  understood  to  mean  (not 
national  property,  but)  *  land  held  by  custom  under  the  old  common  law,' 
as  distinct  from  land  held  under  writing  or  deed. 

2  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  4. 

^  Anon.  Hist.  Abb.  ;  Bed.  Op.  vi.  418. 

*  'Lapideam  .  .  .  juxta  Romanorum  quem  semper  amabat  morem;' 
Bede.  Hist.  Abb.  5.  Cp.  Bede,  iii.  4  ;  v.  21.  See  Reeves's  Adamnan, 
p.  177  ;  and  above,  p.  15. 

'  Above,  p.  267  ;  cp.  Greg.  Tur.  de  Glor.  Mart.  i.  59. 
«  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  7.     See  Malmesb.  G.  Pontif.  iv.  186. 
■^  '  De  transmarinis  regionibus  advectare,'  &c.     Bede,  1.  c. 

*  Bede,  1.  c.  Freeman  considers  the  porch  of  Monk  wearmouth  church 
to  be  'plainly  a  piece  of  the  work  of  the  seventh  century,'  v.  899. 

^  Anon.  Hist.  Abb.,  Bed.  Op,  vi.  418;  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  9;  Lingard, 
A.-S.  Ch.  i.  208.  So  St.  Boniface  sent  Sturmi  to  visit  the  great  monasteries 
of  Italy,  in  order  to  study  their  rules  and  *  traditions,'  with  a  view  to  the 
new  foundation  of  Fulda ;  Vit.  S.  Sturmi,  14 ;  Pertz,  Mon.  Germ.  Hist, 
ii.  371. 

X  % 


3o8 


Ceolfrid. 


CHAP.  IX.  his  oreat  namesake,  as  we  infer  from  words  of  his  own, 
was  highly  esteemed  by  him,  but  was  not  adopted  indis- 
criminately or  in  the  lump.     In  these  and  all  his  labours 

Oeolfrid.  he  had  a  '  most  active  coadjutor '  in  Ceolfrid  ^  whose 
histor}^  was  only  less  interesting  than  his  own.  It  was 
in  some  sense  like  his  own  :  for  Ceolfrid  also  was  nobly 
bom,  and  had  been  piously  trained^,  and  at  eighteen 
had  entered  the  monastery  of  Gilling  ^,  then  ruled  by  his 
kinsman  Tunbert,  afterwards  for  a  short  time  bishop  of 
Hexham.  With  him  Ceolfrid  afterv\^ards  went  to  Ripon, 
and  entered  the  monastery  of  Wilfrid,  who  ordained  him 
priest,  at  the  age  of  twenty-seven,  in  669.  He  then 
ti-a veiled  into  Kent,  in  order  to  study  the  monastic  discipline 
of  the  great  Gregorian  houses :  and  also  visited  the  abbot 
Botulf  at  Ikanho,  by  way  of  enlarging  and  varying  his 
experience  of  such  institutions.  Yet,  when  he  returned 
to  Ripon,  he  undertook  the  homely  office  of  baker  to  the 
monastery  * ;  and,  while  heating  the  oven  and  preparing  the 
loaves,  used  mentally  to  go  over,  and  perfect  himself  in, 
'the  ceremonial  acts  of  the  priesthood.'  He  was  soon, 
however,  elevated  to  the  priorship,  and  Benedict  obtained 
Wilfrid's   leave   to   transfer   him    to    the   same   office    at 


^  Anon.  Hist.  Abb.,  Bed.  Op.  vi.  416 ;  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  6.  See 
Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  392 ;  Alb.  Butler,  Sept.  25  ;  Church  Quart.  Kev. 
XXV.  437. 

^  His  father,  a  '  comes,'  had  one  day  prepared  a  rich  banquet  for  Oswy  ; 
a  call  to  arms  prevented  the  royal  visit,  and  then  'ille,  gratias  divinae 
dispensationi  referens,'  assembled  all  the  poor,  sick,  and  wayfarers  within 
reach,  set  them  down  to  the  meal  which  had  awaited  '  the  earthly  king,' 
and  with  his  wife  waited  on  '  the  heavenly  King  in  His  lowly  ones ' ; 
Anon.  Hist.  Abb. 

^  Above,  p.  187.  The  former  superior,  Kynefrid,  went  to  Ireland  'for 
the  pu]-pose  of  studying  the  Scriptures  and  seeing  the  Lord  more  freely  in 
tears  and  prayers';  Anon.  Hist.  1.  c. ;  see  above,  pp.  184,  212. 

*  Anon.  Hist.  :  'Siquidem  tempore  non  pauco  pistoris  oflficium  tenens,' 
&c.  Different  handicrafts  were  practised  by  the  monks ;  see  Bede,  v.  14, 
on  the  wicked  monk  who  was  skilful  as  a  carpenter.  St.  Columba  had 
a  Saxon  as  baker  at  Hy,  Adamn.  Vit.  Col.  iii.  10 ;  and  see  ib.  iii.  12,  on 
'diversa  opera.'  Cp.  St.  Boniface,  Ep.  69:  'Stirme  in  coquina  sit, 
Bernardus  .  .  .  aedificet  domunculas  vestras.'  St.  Sturmi,  remembering 
the  rule  that  'artes  diversae*  should  be  practised  in  a  monastery,  set 
some  of  his  monks  to  make  a  new  channel  for  the  river  Fulda ;  Vit. 
Sturm.  20.     Cp.  St.  Benedict,  Reg.  c.  57,  '  Artifices  si  sunt,'  &c. 


) 


Easterwme  and  Stgfrtd,  309 

Wearmouth.  At  first  he  had  some  trouble  with  high-bom  chap.  ix. 
monks,  who  had  been  attracted  to  the  new  house  by  the 
secular  rank  once  belonging  to  its  founder,  or  by  the  royal 
patronage  lavished  on  his  undertaking,  but  who  '  could  not 
endure  regular  discipline  ^'  So  vexatious  was  their  bearing, 
that  Ceolfrid  even  threw  up  a  task  which  they  seemed  to 
render  hopeless,  and  went  back  to  Ripon  as  to  a  home.  But 
he  was  induced  by  Benedict  to  return,  and  thenceforward 
his  character  developed  a  steadfast  energy  and  soundness  of 
judgement  which  through  a  long  period  of  monastic  rule 
were  united  with  a  simplicity  and  aiFectionateness,  a  ready 
sympathy,  and  a  fervour  of  devotion,  which  commanded 
the  love  of  the  whole  society  ^.  Another  of  the  first  inmates 
of  Wearmouth  stands  out  in  Bede's  pages  as  a  very  attrac- 
tive figure  :  we  see  a  young  man  of  twenty-four,  strong  and  Easter- 
handsome,  with  '  a  sweet  voice  and  a  cheerful  temper,'  ^^'^^^ 
taking  pleasure  in  sharing  the  commonest  labours  with  his 
fellow-monks,  at  work  in  kitchen  or  garden  or  bakehouse, 
threshing  or  winnowing,  or  milking  the  cattle  ^, — who  yet, 
like  his  cousin  the  founder-abbot,  had  been  a  '  king's 
thane  * ' :  his  name  was  Easterwine.  A  third  brother,  who,  Sigfrid. 
like  these  two,  attained  to  the  highest  dignity  in  the  house, 
was  a  deacon  named  Sigfrid,  who  is  described  as  '  pre- 
eminently intent  on  Scriptural  studies,'  but  amid  them 
had  to  bear  the  burden  of  weak  health,  so  that,  as  Bede 
quaintly  expresses  it, '  his  efibrts  to  keep  innocency  of  heart 

^  Anon.  Hist. :  '  Nam  et  invidias  quorumdam  nobilium,'  &c.  Cp. 
Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  9,  where  Benedict  warns  his  monks  against  choosing  an 
abbot  for  the  sake  of  his  noble  blood.  Comp.  Green,  Making  of  Engl, 
p.  346. 

^  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  12,  13 :  *  Industrius  per  omnia  .  .  .  acutus  ingenio, 
actu  impiger,  maturus  animo,  religionis  zelo  fervens  .  .  .  Incomparabilem 
orandi  psallendique  sollertiam  .  .  .  mirabilem  et  coercendi  improbos 
fervorem,  et  modestiam  consolandi  infirmos'  (here  'modestiam'  seems  to 
mean  gentleness^  &c.  ;  and  ib.  14,  *  nutritoris  tutorisque  .  .  .  spiritualis 
.  .  .  libertatis  et  pacis.'  The  Anon,  Hist.  Abb.  speaks  of  him  as  'acer 
ingenio,  strenuus  actu  .  .  .  flagrans  amore  simul  et  timore  divine,'  «fec. 
See  Bp.  Browne,  Lessons  from  E.  E.  Ch.  Hist.,  p.  6a. 

^  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  7  :  '  Ventilare  cum  eis  et  triturare,  oves  vitulasque 
mulgere,  in  pistrino,  in  coquino,  in  cunctis  monasterii  operibus,  jocundus 
et  obediens  gauderet  exerceri,'  &c.     Cp.  Benedict,  Reg.  c.  46, 

*  *'  Minister.'     See  above,  p.  129. 


3IO  Hilda  at  Whitby, 

CHAP.  IX.  were  carried  on  under  pressure  of  an  incurable  affection  of 
the  lungs  ^.' 

Hilda  at  Let  US  go  Southward  again,  and  observe  the  condition  of 
^  ^*  that  already  famous  convent  which  had  been  the  scene 
of  the  Conference,  and  which  looked  down  in  its  pride  of 
place  over  the  German  Ocean.  In  Hilda,  the  royal  grand- 
niece  of  the  great  Edwin,  we  see  the  old  Teutonic  type 
of  a  woman  of  wise  *  rede '  and  mighty  influence,  a  Veleda  ^ 
or  an  Alioruna,  softened  and  transfigured  into  '  the  Mother ' 
whose  advice  was  sought  by  princes,  and  who  'held  out 
to  many  '  at  a  distance  '  an  example  of  the  works  of  light  ^.' 
Hers  had  been  a  career  signally  conspicuous  and  widely 
effective.  Bom  three  years  before  the  fall  of  Ethelfrid, — 
baptized  at  York  by  Paulinus,  at  thirteen, — bent  on  joining 
her  sister,  Queen  Hereswid,  in  a  Frankish  convent,  and 
only  recalled,  by  Aidan's  express  summons,  to  Northumbria, 
— for  one  year  a  nun  in  a  small  cell  on  the  north  of  the 
Wear, — then  abbess  of  Hartlepool  *  in  succession  to  Heiu, — 
then  foundress  and  abbess  of  Whitby  in  657,  she  was  sixty 
years  old  when,  in  674,  she  began  to  suffer  from  recurring 
attacks  of  fever,  and  '  for  six  years  ceased  not  to  labour 
under  the  same  disease,  but  in  all  that  time  never  omitted 
to  give  thanks  in  her  own  person  to  her  Maker,  and 
publicly  as  well  as  privately  to  teach  the  flock  committed 
to  her  charge  to  serve  the  Lord  obediently  while  they  had 
health,  and  under  adversity  or  bodily  infirmity  to  be 
faithful  in  rendering  thanks  to  Him  ^.'     A  noble  woman, 

'  Hist.  Abb.  8  :  '  irremediabili  pulmonum  vitio.'    Cp.  Anon.  Hist.  Abb. 

^  Tacitus,  Germ.  6.  'The  name  of  Hild  was  that  of  a  Saxon  war- 
goddess  ;  also  nearly  synonymous  with  Fate ; '  Stevenson,  Chron.  of 
Abingdon,  ii.  p.  xxxviii.  Cp.  Merivale,  Conversion  of  Northern  Nations, 
p.  150.  So  Wilson,  Prehistoric  Ann.  of  Scotl.  ii.  387  :  '  In  an  ancient 
poem  in  the  Icelandic  Saga,  Hilda,  the  Scandinavian  goddess  of  war  and 
victory,  is  introduced  with  her  weird  sisters,  the  Valkyries,*  &c. 

3  Bede,  iv.  23  :  'Tantae  autem  erat  ipsa  prudentiae,'  &c.  For  Hilda's 
career  see  above,  pp.  135,  188,  212. 

*  Bede  mentions  several  Northumbrian  religious  houses  of  lower  rank, 
as  Abercorn,  Carlisle,  Tynemouth,  Hartlepool,  Gilling,  Hackness,  Coquet 
Island,  Watton,  Derawood  or  Beverley,  a  place  near  the  Dacre,  and  one 
in  Elmete. 

^  Bede,  iv.  23 :  *  Percussa  etenim  febribus,'  &c.  The  discipline  of  bodily 
affliction  is  a  favourite  theme  with  Bede  :  cp.  ii.  17  ;  iv.  9,  19,  31 ;  Vit. 


Eminent  monks  of  Whitby,  311 

we  may  well  say, — strong  and  wise,  true-hearted  and  firm  chap.  ix. 
of  purpose,  with  warm  affections  and  clear  discernment, 
using  her  great  capacities  for  rule  and  guidance  in  the 
true  spirit  of  '  a  mother  in  Israel/ — in  some  sense  a  medi- 
aeval Mere  Angdlique :  one  sees  how  she  had  largely 
succeeded  where  Ebba  had  ultimately  failed,  impressing 
her  own  mind  on  the  double  community  which  bowed 
to  her  as  its  head,  establishing  a  tradition  of  unanimity 
and  unselfishness  ^  and,  as  Bede  says,  '  making  her  monks 
give  so  much  time  to  the  study  of  Scripture,  and  so  much 
heed  to  the  practice  of  good  works  ^,'  that  bishops  came 
to  think  of  her  house  as  the  best  place  for  supplying 
competent  'ordinands,'  and  five  of  the  brethren^,  whom 
Bede  enumerates,  '  all  of  them  persons  of  signal  worth 
and  holiness,'  attained  the  episcopal  dignity.  But  there  Caedmon.- 
was  one  inhabitant  of  the  monastery  whom  his  brethren 
venerated  for  a  gift  which  they  ascribed  to  special  inspira- 
tion ;  although  they  could  not  have  imagined  the  unique 
place  which  he  was  to  hold,  through  all  generations  of 
their  race,  as  the  father  of  English  poetry.  Rude  warlike 
ballads  were  doubtless  current  among  the  Angles  who 
came  with  Ida,  and  the  Saxons  who  came  with  Cerdic, — 
songs  of  the  great  deeds  of  ancestors,  such  as  might  form, 
when  mingled  with  lays  of  lighter  mood,  '  the  salt  of  the 
feast  * '  alike  to  eorl   and   ceorl :    but  something  greater 

Cuthb.  28,  37  ;  Hist.  Abb.  9 ;  where  also  he  says  that  Benedict  Biscop 
during  a  long  illness  took  care  'in  dolore  semper  Auctori  gratias  referre,' 
&c.  He  repeatedly  refers  to  medical  treatment,  e.  g.  iv.  19 ;  v.  3 ; 
V.  C.  23,  30,  37,  45.  He  mentions  various  kinds  of  ordinary  disease, 
as  fever,  paralysis,  tumour,  affection  of  lungs,  pleurisy,  dysentery, 
diarrhoea. 

^  Bede,  iv.  23  :  *  Maxime  pacis  et  caritatis  custodiam  docuit,  ita  ut,  in 
exemplum  primitivae  ecclesiae,  nullus  ibi  dives,  nullus  esset  egens, 
omnibus  essent  omnia  communia,'  &c. 

^  Bede,  1.  c. :  'Tantum  lection  i  divinarum  Scripturarum,'  &c.  Higden, 
Polychron.  b.  5.  c.  19,  calls  her  '  sancta,  prudens,  litterata.' 

^  Bosa  bishop  of  York,  iEtIa  of  Dorchester,  Oftfor  of  Worcester,  John 
of  Hexham  and  York,  Wilfrid  II  of  York. 

*  Lord  Lytton's  '  Harold,'  p.  29.  See  Turner,  iii.  58  ;  Palgrave,  Engl. 
Comm.  p.  390  ;  and  Freeman,  v.  587,  who  more  than  once  remarks  (i.  392, 
iii*  733)  that  there  are  fragments  of  old  ballads  in  Henry  of  Huntingdon  : 
see  the  sayings  recorded  by  him  as  to  great  battles  (above,  pp.  123,  152, 


312  Ccedmon. 

CHAP.  IX.  announced  its  presence,  perhaps  before  Oswy's  death, 
certainly  during  Hilda's  abbacy,  under  circumstances  as 
unpromising  as  ever  attended  a  literary  epoch.  To  know 
what  it  was,  we  must  glance  at  the  life  of  Anglian 
herdsmen  ^  employed  on  a  farmstead,  which  stood  on 
part  of  the  abbey  property.  One  of  these,  a  man  well 
on  in  years,  bore  the  name  of  Caedmon.  He  was  behind- 
hand with  his  fellows  through  inability  to  sing^:  and 
whenever  he  made  one  of  a  'beer-party^,'  at  which  it 
was  expected  that  *  for  mirth-sake '  each  in  turn  should 
play  the  '  gleeman,'  he  could  not  see  the  harp  being  passed 
round  towards  him  without  starting  up  from  the  unfinished 
meal,  and  going  home  shamefast*.  One  evening  he  had 
thus  left  his  mates,  and  gone,  not  to  his  own  dwelling, 
but  to  the  cattle-shed  which  for  that  night  was  under 
his  charge.  There  he  lay  down  and  slept,  and  in  his 
dream  some  person  stood  by  him,  and  greeted  him  by 
name.  '  Ceedmon,  sing  me  something.'  He  thought  that 
he  answered,  '  I  cannot  sing :  that  is  why  I  came  away 
from  the  party.'  '  However,  you  have  got  to  sing  to  me  ^ ! ' 
*  What  must  I  sing  ? '  '  Sing  of  the  creation.'  And  so,  in 
his  sleep,  these  verses  came  to  him  :  '  he  sang,  in  praise 
of  God  the  Maker  ^'— 

176,  203).  Compare  the  story  of  the  Frisian  Bernlef,  who  was  much  loved 
because  ...  *  antiquorum  actus  regumque  certamina  bene  noverat  psallendo 
promere ' ;  Vit.  S.  Liudg.  ii.  i. 

'  For  an  Old-English  description  of  their  duties,  see  Turner,  ii.  546. 
Dr.  Atkinson  indeed  thinks  that  Caedmon  was  probably  a  'gebur,' 
*villanus,'atenant  under  the  monastery,  and  of  'British'  birth  ;  Memorials 
of  Old  Whitby,  p.  13  ff.  But  he  seems  to  underrate  the  intelligence  of 
Anglian  'folk'  at  this  period. 

^  See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  154  :  *To  chant  the  songs  of  gleemen  to  the 
harp  was  an  acquirement  common  even  to  the  lowest  classes.'  This 
Atkinson  questions. 

2  So  king  Alfred  translates  'convivium.'     Cp.  Turner,  iii.  31. 

*  Bede,  iv.  24  :  'Surgebat  a  media  coena,  et'egressus,*  &c. 

*  '  Attamen  mihi  cantare  habes.'  Cp.  Bede,  iii.  22,  '  in  ipsa  domo  mori 
habes;'  and  also  iv.  14,  *  exspectare  habes;'  iv.  24,  'neque  onim  mori 
adhuc  habes.*  So  in  the  Quicunque,  38  ;  '■  homines  resurgere  habent.' 
This  use  of  '  habeo  *  occurs  in  the  writings  of  African  fathers. 

"^  See  the  original  Northumbrian  text  in  Sweet's  Anglo-Saxon  Reader, 
p.  195,  and  Plummer,  ii.  251.  Bede's  Latin  professedly  gives  the  sense, 
rather   than   the   exact   order   of  the  words.     See  Lingard's  version  of 


His  gift  of  poetry.  313 

Now  should  we  praise  the  Guardian  of  the  heaven-realm, 

Tlie  Maker's  might  and  His  mind-thought, 

(And  the)  works  of  the  glorious  Father,  as  He  of  each  wonder, 

Eternal  Lord,  created  the  beginning  ^ 

He  erst  shaped  for  children  of  men 

Heaven  as  a  roof, — the  holy  Creator : 

Then  the  middle  world  did  mankind's  Guardian, 

Eternal  Lord,  afterwards  create, 

Earth  for  men, — (the)  Lord  Almighty. 

On  waking,  he  retained  in  memory  what  he  had  seemed 
to  sing  in  his  dream,  and  presently  added  other  words 
to  the  same  purport.  He  then  told  the  bailiff,  or  '  tun- 
reeve^,'  what  had  happened,  or,  as  Bede  says,  'what  a  gift 
he  had  received : '  and  was  by  him  straightway  conducted 
to  the  abbess,  who,  *  in  the  presence  of  many  learned  men,' 
heard  his  story.  All  agreed  that  it  was  a  Divine  boon 
bestowed  on  the  herdsman :  they  then  read  to  him  a  portion 
of  Scripture,  and  bade  him  turn  it  into  poetry  if  he  could. 
He  w^ent  off  with  his  task,  and  'next  morning  produced 
the  passage  excellently  versified ' :  whereupon  '  the  Mother  ^ ' 
persuaded  him  to  become  a  monk,  solemnly  received  him 
into  the  community,  and  ordered  that  he  should  be  in- 
structed in  the  whole  course  of  sacred  history.  He  listened 
attentively  to  all  that  he  was  thus  taught,  and  *  ruminating 
it  over,  like  a  clean  animal,  turned  it  into  most  sweet 
verse ' :  and  then  his  teachers  were  his  hearers  while  '  he 
sang  to  them  of  the  creation  of  the  world,  the  origin  of 
mankind,  the  whole  history  of  Genesis,  the  Exodus,  the 
entrance  into  Canaan,  other  events  of  Scripture  history, 
the  Incarnation,  Passion,  Resurrection,  the  coming  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  the  teaching  of  the  Apostles  *.     Many  a  poem 

Alfred's  text,  ii.  408  ;  and  Turner,  iii.  266.  Compare  the  verses  on  death, 
repeated  by  Bede  when  dying. 

^  Bede  renders,  *  cum  sit  aeternus  Deus,  omnium  miraculorum  auctor 
exstitit.' 

2  Kemble,  ii.  176  ;  a  'tun,  enclosure,  farm,  vill,  or  manor.'  See  Green, 
Making  of  England,  p.  180,  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  93,  for  the  history  of  the 
word.     Caedmon  would  be  under  the  orders  of  the  tun-reeve. 

^  Bede,  iv.  24 :   '  Unde  mox  abbatissa,'  &c. 

*  On  the  'Metrical  Paraphrase,'  now  extant  under  the  name  of  Caedmon, 
see  Diet,  of  Chr.  Biographj',  i.  370.  Thorpe,  in  his  edition  of  it  (1832), 
inclined  to  regard  it  as  generally  authentic.     It  has,  however,  character- 


314  Ccedmon, 

CHAP.  IX.  also  did  he  make  about  the  awful  future  judgement,  the 
terrible  punishment  in  hell,  the  sweetness  of  the  heavenly 
kingdom,  the  blessings  and  the  judgements  of  God ;  in  all 
which,  his  aim  was  to  draw  men  away  from  the  love  of 
wickedness,  and  to  stir  them  up  to  the  love  and  diligent 
practice  of  well-doing.  For  he  was  a  man  very  religious, 
and  humbly  obedient  to  the  discipline  of  the  rules,  but 
kindled  with  fervent  and  zealous  indignation  against  those 
who  chose  to  be  disobedient.'  As  to  'frivolous'  songs,  we 
are  assured  that  Csedmon  could  not  compose  any  such. 
All  his  works  were  the  outflow  of  a  pious  mind,  and  were 
often  found  effective  as  stimulants  to  piety,  to  '  contempt 
for  the  world,  and  craving  for  heavenly  life.' 

How  long  he  lived  as  a  monk  in  Whitby,  we  know  not. 
But  it  is  natural  to  connect  this  account  of  the  outburst 
of  his  poetic  powers  with  the  exquisite  narrative  of  his 
happy  death,  which  probably  happened  not  long  afterwards. 
With  all  his  own  vividness  and  pathos,  Bede  makes  us  see 
the  old  man  in  the  fortnight  of  his  last  illness,  which 
does  not  confine  him  to  his  bed.  One  evening  he  asks 
the  attendant  to  prepare  for  his  reception  in  the  out- 
building assigned  to  the  sick  and  dying  ^ :  the  man  wonders, 
but  takes  Csedmon  thither  before  midnight.     After  some 

istics  which  do  not  suit  a  Whitby  herdsman.  Evidently  it  is  a  compilation 
from  several  writers,  one  of  whom  must  have  really  known  war,  when 
'men  saw  the  grim  war-wofe,  the  hard  hand-play.'  There  are  very  noble 
passages  in  the  poem  ;  in  Adam  and  Eve,  while  unfallen,  '  was  burning 
love  of  the  Lord  ; '  *  Mickle  wonder  that  God  eternal  would  ever  bear 
that  so  many  a  *'  thane"  was  misled  by  the  lies '  of  Satan  ;  ' Let  us  turn 
thither  where  He  sits  .  .  .  the  Saviour  Lord,  in  that  dear  home,'  &c. 
The  poem  begins  with  words  in  the  same  tone  as  the  undoubted  fragment, 
but  not  identical  with  it :  and  ends  with  the  fiends'  words  to  Satan, 
'Thus  be  now  in  evil  :  good  erst  thou  wouldest  not.'  It  is  curious  that 
Satan  is  described  as  sending  an  inferior  fiend  to  beguile  Adam  and  Eve  : 
this  tempter  twines  himself,  in  form  of  a  'worm,'  round  the  tree  of 
knowledge,  and  announces  himself  as  God's  angel,  &c.  The  '  harrowing 
of  hell '  takes  place  on  the  dawn  of  Easter-day ;  Eve  and  Adam  plead 
with  Christ,  and  are  released.  Green  ascribes  to  Caedmon  himself  the 
Genesis  poem,  minus  sl  long  series  of  verses,  '  which  include  the  famous 
passage  about  Satan.'  Making  of  Engl.  p.  370.  But  Plummer  thinks 
'  there  is  no  evidence  ...  to  connect  these  poems  with  Caedmon.' 

^  Cp.  Bede,  iii.  27,  iv.  14,  for  the  cells  set  apart  for  the  sick,  and  iv.  9, 
that  of  the  dying  in  monasteries. 


His  death,  315 

pleasant  talk  to  the  other  patients,  he  asks,  '  Have  you  chap.  ix. 
the  HouseP  within  ?'  meaning  the  Holy  Eucharist,  reserved 
(in  one  kind  only)  for  the  sick.  They  answer,  '  What  need 
have  you  of  the  Housel?  you  have  not  got  to  die  just 
yet^, — you  talk  too  cheerily  for  that.'  'However,'  he 
rejoins,  *  bring  me  the  Housel.'  He  takes  it  into  his  hand  ^, 
and  asks  whether  they  all  feel  kindly  towards  him  '*. 
They  reply,  '  Surely,  and  we  pray  you  to  feel  so  towards 
us.'  'Dear  children,'  such  is  the  sweet  answer,  'I  feel 
kindly  towards  all  God's  servants^.'  He  then  'fortifies 
himself  with  the  heavenly  viaticum  ^,'  and  asks  how  soon 
the  brethren  would  be  'awakened  for  nocturnal  lauds'''.' 

*  It  will  not  be  long,'  they  say.  '  Good ;  then  let  us  wait 
for  that  hour.'  He  signs  himself  with  the  cross,  lies  back 
on  the  pillow,  falls  asleep,  and  so  '  in  stillness '  passes  away : 
his  last  words  harmonizing  with  all  that  he  had  uttered 
'in  praise  of  his  Creator.'  Such  was  the  death  of  the 
poet-monk  of  Whitby:    read  the  account  of  Bede's  own 

^  Alfred's  rendering  of  Bede's  '  eucharistiam,'  liusU  from  'hostia.'  The 
chalice  was  not  in  this  case  reserved.  Compare  the  story  of  Serapion  in 
Euseb.  vi.  44  ;  and  Bede,  iv.  14,  '  oblationis  particulam.' 

^  Above,  p.  312. 

^  The  ancient  practice  of  receiving  the  Eucharist  into  the  hands  (e.  g. 
Cyril  Hier.,  Cat.  Myst.  5.  21  ;  and  see  Bingham,  b.  xv.  c.  5.  s.  6)  was  still 
retained  in  the  case  of  men.     Cp.  Greg.  Turon.  H.  Fr.  x.  8. 

*  '  Had  they  all  a  mild  mood  towards  him  ? '  '  Yes,  they  were  all  blithe 
of  mood,'  &c.     Cp.  Hist.  Abb.  13,  on  Ceolfrid's  farewell. 

^  '  God's  men,'  Alfred.  On  the  Old-English  custom  of  choosing  a  lord, 
or  becoming  the  '  man '  of  a  superior  or  lord  who  was  to  give  protection 
in  return  for  fealty,  see  Freeman,  i.  119  ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  90. 

"  Cp.  Bede,  iv.  14  :  '  viatico  Dominici   corporis  et  sanguinis ; '  iv.  23, 

*  viatico  sacrosanctae  communionis ; '  and  v.  14,  'sine  viatico  salutis.' 

^  Alfred  inserts,  *  to  teach  God's  folk.'  '  Nocturn  lauds'  mean  matins  : 
cp.  Vit.  Cuthb.  40,  'nocturnae  psalmodiae;'  and  Hist.  Trans.  Cuthb., 
Bed.  Op.  vi.  414.  So  Bede  refers  to  the  time  'matutinae  laudis,'  iii.  12  ; 
and  to  the  '  psalmody  matutinae  laudis,'  iv.  7.  By  a  coincidence  the 
phrase  is  translated  in  the  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  'midnight  lauds.* 
So  Hist.  Abb.  7.  See  Benedict,  Reg.  Mon.  10.  So  in  the  'Excerptions' 
ascribed  to  Egbert,  but  of  later  date  (Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  415),  no 
service  intervenes  between  the  nocturnal  'synaxis'  (matins  or  matin 
lauds)  and  prime  (No.  28,  Johnson,  Engl.  Can.  i.  189).  In  the  sixth 
century  to  say  Ps.  50  (our  51st),  the  Benedictio  (  =  Benedicite),  the  AUe- 
luiaticus  (Ps.  148-150),  with  a  'little  chapter,'  was  to  finish  matins,  Greg. 
Tur.  Vit.  Patr.  vi.  7.  Gradually  this  concluding  part  of  matins  became 
a  distinct  office  of  lauds. 


3i6  Ca^dmons  death, 

CHAP.  IX.  last  moments,  written  by  an  eye-witness  and  prefixed  to 
his  History,  and  you  will  find  the  two  scenes  very  similar 
in  form,  and  altogether  identical  in  spirit.  Of  Bede  also 
it  might  be  said,  as  he  has  said  in  express  words  of 
Caedmon,  and  also  implicitly  of  Aidan,  Hilda,  Chad,  Sebbi, 
and  Egbert,  that  *  he  closed  his  life  with  a  beautiful  and 
tranquil  end\' 

^  Bede,  iv.  24  :  '  Unde  et  pulchro  vitam  suam  fine  conclusit  .  .  .  tran- 
quilla  morte  mundum  relinquens.* 


CHAPTER  X. 


To  pass  from  the  convent-life  of  Wearmouth  or  of  Wilfrid's 
Whitby  to  the  personal  troubles  and  public  dissensions 
which  constitute  the  great  'cause  of  Bishop  Wilfrid/  is 
as  if  one  were  suddenly  transported  from  the  margin 
of  a  land-locked  harbour  to  a  rough  coast  lashed  by 
a  rising  sea.  That  the  sea,  so  to  speak,  would  rise, — 
that,  sooner  or  later,  Wilfrid's  splendid  prosperity  would 
be  interrupted,  must  have  been  evident  to  him,  one  would 
think,  ever  since  he  placed  the  veil  on  the  head  of  Queen 
Etheldred.  Her  husband  knew  well,  and  could  not  be 
expected  to  forget,  who  it  was  that  had  upheld  her,  with  Alienation 
the  whole  force  of  his  spiritual  influence,  in  a  resolution  °"^' 
the  reverse  of  wife-like  ^,  and  at  whose  feet  she  had  sealed 
it  by  pronouncing  those  new  vows  which  were  to  nullify 
the  old  in  her  estimation.  To  that  step,  indeed,  a  consent 
had  been  wrung  from  him  by  what  he  would  regard  as 
her  impracticable  and  unnatural  obstinacy^:   the  marriage 

^  Thomas  of  Ely  unintentionally  makes  the  case  worse  for  Wilfrid, 
saying  that  he  '  dissimulavit,  provide  atque  prudenter,'  as  if  agreeing  with 
the  king,  and  promised  to  persuade  the  queen  to  abandon  her  purpose ; 
*  veritus  ne,  sicut  contigit,  ob  rem  hujuscemodi  offensum  ilium  haberet. 
Et  dum  circa  talia,  ut  aestimabatur,  sanctus  pontifex  reginam  alioqui 
intenderet  .  .  .  egit  vir  beatus  sua  industria,  ut  potius  divortium 
quaereret,'  &c.  ;  Vit.  Etheldr.  9  ;  Act.  SS.  Bened.  ii.  747.  Neither  Bede 
(iv.  19)  nor  Eadmer  (Vit.  Wilf.  25)  knows  of  any  such  insincere  promise. 

^  Thomas  represents  him  as  objecting  strongly  to  a  separation  from 
a  beloved  wife,  but  at  last  yielding  to  her  importunities,  'licet  invitus, 
tamen  earn  dimisit  invincibilem  ; '  Act.  SS.  Ben.  ii.  747.  A  maiden 
espoused  to  Sigebert  II  of  Austrasia,  on  arriving  at  his  court,  *  concealed 
her  purpose  '  for  a  week,  and  then  took  the  veil  'within  closed  doors '  : 
the  king  (afterwards  canonized,  but  a  *  Faineant ')  'gave  her  over  to  the 
Lord.'  She  had  acted,  we  are  expressly  told,  '  by  the  advice  '  of  St.  Gall ; 
Vit.  S.  Galli,  i.  (Pertz,  Mon.  Germ.  Hist.  ii.  12).  Trickeries  devised  for 
a  monastic  interest  were  not  then  deemed  unworthy  of  religion. 


3i8         Beginning  of  Wilfrid's  troubles, 

CHAP.  X.  had,  under  the  peculiar  circumstances,  been  declared  void, 
and  Egfrid  had  been  allowed  to  contract  another;  but 
he  was  not  the  less  alienated  from  the  prelate  who  had 
so  systematically  thwarted  him  in  regard  to  his  domestic 
comfort.  He  would  utter  that  complaint,  often  enough 
heard  afterwards,  and  in  his  case  at  any  rate  not  unjust, 
that  the  Church  had  come  between  wife  and  husband: 
and  his  new  queen,  Ermenburga,  from  a  personal  dislike  ^ 
to  her  predecessor's  confidential  guide,  appears  to  have 
stimulated  the  irritation  of  Egfrid  by  appealing  to  his 
susceptibilities  as  a  prince.  Wilfrid's  magnificent  position, 
his  *  secular  glory  and  riches,'  the  number  of  monasteries 
under  his  obedience  ^,  the  stately  buildings  which  he  had 
reared,  the  '  host '  of  attendants,  nobly  born  and  nurtured, 
who  appeared  in  his  halls,  arrayed  like  the  king's  thanes 
in  the  palace^, — these  things  were  easily  represented  as 
unbefitting  any  one  ecclesiastic,  and  as  proving  that 
he  ought  not  to  hold  a  bishopric  coextensive  with  the 
kingdom. 
Scheme  of  We  seem  to  hear  the  first  mutterings  of  a  storm  that 
partSon.   afterwards    assailed    the    proud    elevation    of    a    mitred 

^  Eddi  compares  her  to  Jezebel,  c.  24  ;  but  we  know  that  he  had  applied 
that  name  to  Bathildis,  and  we  must  not  expect  fairness  of  judgement  or 
moderation  in  language  from  so  pronounced  a  partisan.  See  Fridegod, 
'  ceu  garrula  perdix  Culpabat  justum  collatis  rebus  abuti,'  606  :  and 
Eadmer,  26,  *  Per  hanc  igitur  diabolus,*  &c.  :  and  Richard  of  Hexham, 
'in  cujus  corde  Sathanas  contra  .  .  .  episcopum  odiorum  et  invidiae 
fomenta  conflans  ;'  De  stat.  Hagust.  Eccl.  c.  7,  X  Script.  294.  Etheldred 
was  still  living  at  Ely. 

"^  Richard  of  Hexham,  ib.  c.  5,  calls  him  Hhe  father  of  nine  monasteries,* 
and  says  that  many  abbots  and  abbesses  '  commended  their  houses  to  his 
keeping,  others  named  him  their  successor.' 

3  Eddi,  24  :  'Enumeransei  .  .  .  Wilfridi  .  .  .  omnem  gloriam  saecu- 
larem  et  divitias,  necnon  coenobiorum  multitudinem  et  aedificiorum 
magnitudinem  .  .  .  exercitum  sodalium  regalibus  vestimentis  et  armis 
ornatum.'  Eadmer,  26,  makes  her  say  to  Egfrid,  '  Your  whole  kingdom 
is  his  bishopric.  What  if,'  in  time  of  war,  '•  he  should  keep  back  his  men 
from  fighting  on  your  side?'  Malmesb.  G.  P.  iii.  100,  p.  219  :  '  Conflavit 
ergo  pontifici  regina  invidiam,  quod  tot  abbates,  tot  abbatias,  haberet, 
quod  aureis  et  argenteis  vasis  sibi  ministrari  faceret,  quod  "  clientum 
turba,"  nitore  vestium  superbiens,  illius  latus  obambularet.'  He  had  just 
before  intimated  that  some  jealousy  of  this  sort  had  existed  earlier,  and 
had  been  allayed  by  Etheldred,  'sanitate  consilii.'  See  Stubbs,  Const. 
Hist.  i.  176. 


{ 


Scheme  for  dividing  his  diocese.         319 

chancellor  or  a  prince-bishop :  and  it  so  happened  that  chap.  x. 
these  royal  jealousies  were  excited  just  when  Theodore 
was  bent  on  carrying  out  his  scheme  of  diocesan  partition. 
That  scheme  he  pursued  from  motives  of  a  public  character; 
in  regard  to  Northumbria,  it  involved  the  abatement 
of  Wilfrid's  ecclesiastical  greatness  ^ :  but  Theodore's  mis- 
fortune and  fault  consisted  not  simply  in  aiming  at  this 
as  a  step  necessary  for  the  general  good  of  the  Church, 
but  in  associating  himself  with  the  animosities  of  a  court 
as  instrumental  towards  his  object,  and  in  neglecting  such 
considerations  of  order  and  justice  as  would  have  checked 
the  march  of  his  own  high-handed  ^  absolutism.  We 
are  in  some  difficulty  as  to  the  facts,  between  the  open 
partisanship  of  the  biographer  and  the  disappointing 
reticence  of  the  historian:  Bede  had  evidently  a  strong 
reluctance  to  go  into  the  subject^,  and  it  is  one  of  the 
very  few  cases  in  which  he  has  laid  himself  open  to  the 
charge  of  keeping  back  what  he  must  have  known.  He 
says  so  little  in  the  way  of  explanation,  that  he  does 
not  help  us  to  know  whether  or  when  Eddi  says  too 
much, — although  we  may  be  sure  that  he  does  say  too 
much  when  he  imputes  to  Theodore  the  coarse  guilt  of 

^  Lappenberg  suggests  that  he  may  have  feared  that  Wilfrid  was  laying 
the  foundations  of  an  independent  archbishopric  (such  as  St.  Gregory 
had  contemplated)  ;  i.  182.     Malmesbury  says,  the  queen  prejudiced  him. 

^  '  He  carried  it  with  a  high  hand  towards  the  bishops  ; '  Johnson, 
Engl.  Can.  i.  87.  See  Ornsby,  Dioc.  Hist,  of  York,  p.  62.  *  He  was  .  .  . 
even  inclined  to  subordinate  strict  justice  to  politic  expediency  ;  '  Bp. 
Stubbs,  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  iv.  931. 

^  See  Raine,  Fast.  Ebor.  i.  81.  He  mentions  but  does  not  explain  the 
'dissensio'  in  iv.  12,  and  in  the  long  chapter  which  'professes*  to 
summarize  Wilfrid's  life,  v.  19,  refers  to  the  'charges'  brought  against 
him,  and  the  two  '  expulsions.'  In  his  last  work,  Bede  lets  fall  words 
which  might  suggest  that  he  supposed  selfish  motives  to  have  prompted 
Wilfrid.  'Cum  antistes,  dictante  amore  pecuniae,  majorem  populi 
partem  ...  in  nomen  sui  praesulatus  assumpserit  ; '  Ep.  to  Egb.  4  ;  but 
his  reserve  is  probably  accounted  for  by  strong  personal  ties  to  one  of  the 
bishops  who  were  more  or  less  opposed  to  Wilfrid,  *  St.  John  of  Beverley ; ' 
his  fervent  admiration  for  others,  as  Bosa,  Eata,  and  St.  Cuthbert ;  and 
his  high  esteem  for  the  scholarlj-  king  Aldfrid.  That  he  knew  Wilfrid 
personally  appears  from  iv.  19.  He  calls  him  '  most  learned,'  iii.  25, 
*  beatae  memoriae,'  iv.  19,  23,  v.  18 ;  and  does  justice  to  his  missionary 
zeal,  iv.  13. 


320  Division  of  diocese  of  York. 

CHAP.  X.  taking  a  bribe  from  Egfrid  ^.  However,  as  far  as  we  can 
^^  N^^r  ^^^^^  ^^^  anything,  it  seems  that  in  678  Egfrid  invited 
umbria.  Theodore  to  revisit  Northumbria ;  that  they  discussed 
the  division  of  the  Northumbrian  diocese,  and  Theodore 
allowed  himself  to  be  persuaded  that  Wilfrid's  co-operation 
or  assent  was  not  to  be  hoped  for,  and  must  be  dispensed 
with ;  and  that,  acting  on  this  assumption,  he  summoned 
more  than  one  bishop  ^  to  support  him  in  the  proceedings 
which  he  meditated,  but  did  not  communicate  with  the 
Division  bishop  most  directly  concerned.  An  assembly,  partly  secu- 
of  York  ^^^  ^^^  partly  ecclesiastical,  was  convened ;  and  in  Wilfrid's 
absence  it  was  resolved  to  form,  out  of  his  over-large 
diocese,  two  other  bishoprics  for  Bernicia  and  Deira,  and 
another  for  the  district  of  Lindsey,  lately  recovered  from 
Mercia.  But  this  plan  would  have  left  Wilfrid  in  pos- 
session of  the  see  of  York,  and  the  charge  of  part,  probably 
the  larger  part,  of  Deira  ^.  According  to  the  combined 
statements  of  Wilfrid  and  Eddi,  the  suffragan  bishops  did 
not  concur  in  the  consecration  * ;  and  Theodore,  without 
their  assistance,  consecrated  Bosa,  a  monk  of  Whitby, 
a  man,  says  Bede,  *  of  great  holiness  and  humility  ^l  Eata, 
the  devout  and  gentle-hearted  abbot  of  Lindisfarne,  and 
Eadhed,  who  had  accompanied  Chad  on  his  journey  to 
the  south  for  consecration  ^.     The  elevation  of  these  three 

^  Eddi  refers  to  Balak  and  Balaam,  24.  Malmesbury,  G.  Pontif.  p.  220, 
follows  him  in  this  imputation,  '  xeniorum  obtentu ; '  which  naturally 
excites  Elmham's  wrath,  Mon.  S.  Aug.  p.  276.  Malmesbury,  however, 
elsewhere  ranks  Theodore  and  Wilfrid  together  as  '  those  two  eyes  of 
Britain  ';  G.  Pontif.  i.  r.  Fridegod  says  that  the  king  and  queen  deceived 
Theodore,  '  veri  doctorem,  justi  quoquepaewe  sequacem  : '  614. 

^  Wilfrid  says,  '  in  conventu  Theodori  .  .  .  aliorumque  tunc  temporis 
cum  eo  convenientium  antistitum  ; '  in  Eddi,  30.  Who  these  prelates 
were  we  know  not.     For  '  mixed  councils  '  see  above,  p.  223. 

^  So  Malmesbury  says  that  Theodore  maintained  '  sufficere  tantos 
sumptus  tantaeque  dioecesis  circuitum  quattuor  episeopis  ' ;  G.  P.  p.  220. 

*  Wilfrid  says,  'absque  consensu  cujuslibet  episcopi  .  .  .  ordinaret ;'  in 
Eddi,  30  :  and  Eddi,  '  inordinate  solus  ordinavit ; '  24.  Can  it  be  that 
the  suffragans,  whoever  they  were,  declined,  when  it  came  to  the  point, 
to  follow  Theodore  ?  Or  did  they  merely  abstain  from  taking  part  in  the 
new  consecrations  ?  •  Bede,  v.  3  ;  iv.  23. 

^  He  had  been  Oswy's  chaplain  ;  Bede,  iv.  28.  Eddi  permits  himself 
to  describe  these  three  Northumbrian  eccleyiastics  as  *non  de  subjectis 
illius  parochiae ';  24. 


Absolutism  of  Theodore,  321 

to  the  episcopate  took  place  in  Wilfrid's  own  cathedral  chap.  x. 
at  York  ^ :  he  could  not  but  receive  tidings  of  such  an 
event,  and  could  not  but  repair  to  the  court  ^,  and  ask 
why  his  diocese  was  to  be  thus  cut  up  against  his  will. 
The  answer  of  the  king  and  the  archbishop  was, '  We  find 
no  fault  in  you,  but  we  have  thought  good  to  do  this, 
and  we  shall  abide  by  it  ^.'  Theodore,  not  to  say  Egfrid, 
had  committed  himself  by  thus  acting  without  Wilfrid's 
knowledge.  It  could  not  be  said  that  the  division  of 
the  diocese  had  been  proposed  to  Wilfrid,  and  he  had 
deliberately  set  himself  against  it.  Theodore  had  taken 
for  granted  that  he  would  do  so ;  and  by  this  premature 
judgement  had  damaged  his  own  case,  and  exhibited  that 
fatal  indifference  to  equity  which  so  often  besets  a  rigid 
disciplinarian  invested  with  hierarchical  supremacy,  and 
resolute  to  ignore  the  rights  of  subordinates,  and  even 
the  requirements  of  fair  dealing,  for  the  sake  of  a  policy 
beneficial  to  the  Church  *. 

Thus  hardly  used, — we  must  needs  say,  thus  unjustly  Wilfrid 
treated, — Wilfrid  took  a  step  which,  in  Britain,  was  new,  j^^e.^ 
and  which  has  not  always  been  equitably  judged.  He 
could  neither  condone  this  violation  of  his  diocesan  rights, 
nor  hope  for  a  reconsideration  of  the  case  from  a  provincial 
synod  under  the  presidency  of  Theodore^.  He  looked, 
as  if  by  instinct,  to  that  great  Church  for  which  from 
early  years  he  had  entertained  so  profound  a  reverence : 

^  Bede,  iv.  a'l,  'Eboraci.'    Wilfrid  was  absent;  Eddi,  24. 

^  Eddi,  24  :  *  Regem  et  archiepiscopum  .  .  .  cum  omni  populo.'  Eadmer 
says  he  came  to  the  palace  '  hilari  corde,  alacri  vultu  ' ;  27.  Fridegod 
makes  him  ask,  'Curlaedor,  pater?' 

^  Malmesbury  quotes  Juvenal's  'Sit  pro  ratione  voluntas.' 

*  The  partition,  says  Martineau,  though  *  desirable,  could  only  be 
lawfully  and  canonically  effected  with  the  consent  of  Wilfrid ;  and 
it  is  a  serious  charge  against  Theodore  .  .  .  that,  under  the  pretence  of 
effecting  what  was  unquestionably  a  good  thing  for  the  Church,  he 
stooped  to  gratify  the  enmity  of  Egfrid  and  Ermenburga  against  Wilfrid 
by  assisting  in  the  persecution  of  that  prelate  ; '  Ch.  Hist.  Engl.  p.  93. 
So  Malmesbury  says,  *Et  haec  quidem  recte  dicta  possent  videri,  si 
eum  .  .  .  vel  non  omnino  spoliatum  dejiceret,  vel  saltern  cum  consensu 
ejus  ageret;'  G.  P.  iii.  100,  p.  220.  His  'consent'  had  been  made 
impossible. 

5  See  Raine  in  Fast.  Ebor.  p.  78,  and  in  Diet.  Chr.  Bicg.  iv.  1181. 

Y 


322       Wilfrid  deprived  of  the  see  of  York 

CHAP.  X.  he  recalled  his  own  visit  to  Rome,  which  had  been 
crowned  by  the  special  blessing  of  the  then  Pope;  it 
occurred  to  him  that  wrongs  done  at  home  could  be 
set  right  by  means  of  an  appeal  to  that  '  Apostolic  See/ 
from  which  Theodore  himself  had  derived  his  mission : 
and  'after  taking  counsel,'  says  Eddi,  'with  his  fellow- 
bishops/  he  declared  in  their  presence  that  he  did  thus 
make  appeaP.  The  announcement  which  he  had  made 
required  his  instant  departure  for  Italy,  and  seems  to 
have  been  treated,  at  once,  as  involving  the  forfeiture 
His  entire  of  all  his  rights  in  the  see  of  York.  The  design  of 
from  setting  up  three  prelates  to  work  in  Korthumbria  along 

North-       with  him,  and  of  reserving:  to  him  the  first  place  and  the 

umbria. 

church  of  the  royal  city,  was  now  altered  into  a  plan  for 
superseding  him  altogether.  Thus  Bosa  was  appointed  to 
preside  over  the  whole  of  Dfeira,  as  bishop  of  York :  Eata 
was  to  superintend  all  Bernicia  from  his  own  church  of 
Lindisfarne,  or  from  Wilfrid's  minster  of  Hexham :  while 
Eadhed^  became  the  first  bishop  of  Lindsey  as  such,  then 
once  more  attached  to  Northumbrian.  It  was  at  this 
time  that  Theodore  hallowed  Finan's  church  at  Lindisfarne 


^  Eddi,  2'4' :  'Ciim  consilio  coepiscoporum  suorum.'  Wilfrid,  in  Eddi, 
30  :  *  Consacerdotes  meos  .  .  .  episcopos  tantummodo  protestatus.'  Ac- 
cording to  Eddi, — who  compares  the  appeal  to  St.  Paul's  appeal  from  the 
Jews  to  Caesar  (!) — it  was  then  that  Wilfrid,  'turning  away  from  the 
royal  tribunal,  said  to  the  flatterers  who  were  laughing  merrily,  "On 
the  anniversary  of  this  day  on  which  you  are  now  spitefully  laughing  at 
my  condemnation,  you  will  be  weeping  bitterly  amid  your  own  con- 
fusion," '  which  was  fulfilled  at  the  burial  of  prince  Alfwin  in  679.  It 
is  probable  that  Eddi,  an  enthusiastic  partisan,  wrongly  inferred,  from 
the  fact  of  the  protestation  in  presence  of  the  suffragan  bishops,  that  they 
had  encouraged  Wilfrid  to  appeal.  If  they  did  encourage  it,  they  seem 
to  have  repented  of  having  done  so  ;  for  we  do  not  find  that  any  bishop 
supported  Wilfrid's  cause  between  his  expulsion  and  his  restoration. 

^  Bede,  iv.  12  :  '  Et  hunc  primum  eadem  provincia  pf oprium  accepit 
praesulem.'     Chad  had  held  it  with  Mercia.    " 

3  Lindsey  was  Northumbrian  under  Edwin  and  Oswald,  was  conquered 
by  Penda,  regained  by  Oswy,  re-conquered  by  Wulfhere,  recovered  by 
Egfrid  at  latest  in  675,  and  again  conquered  by  Ethelred  in  679.  Then 
Lincolnshire  was  finally  separated  from  Northumbria  ;  but  even  in 
1092  the  archbishop  of  York  claimed  Lincoln  as  belonging  to  his  own 
*  parochia '  or  diocese  :  Florence,  Chron.  ii.  p.  30.  He  was  obliged  to  give 
up  the  claim  for  a  supposed  equivalent  j  see  Raine,  Fast.  Ebor.  i.  151. 


in  consequence  of  his  appeal  to  Rome.    323 

in  honour  of   St.  Peter  ^,  with  a  view,  no  doubt,  to  the   "-hap.  x. 
exhibition    of    his    metropolitical    authority   within    the 
former   stronghold   of  '  schismatic '  Celticism,  as  well   as 
to  the  due  performance  of  such  dedication-ceremonies  as 
would  probably  have  been  omitted  by  a  Celtic  bishop  ^. 

Such  were  the  circumstances  under  which  took  place  Aspects  of 
the  first  appeal  to  Rome  against  the  action  of  English  ^^  '^^^^^  * 
Church  authority.  What  are  we  to  say  of  this  appeal? 
No  doubt,  it  contrasts  very  pointedly  with  the  action 
taken  by  the  African  hierarchy  in  the  latter  years  of  the 
great  Augustine's  life-,  when,  ignoring  the  'Sardican 
Council's '  resolutions^  which  empowered  the  Roman  bishop 
in  certain  eases  to  appoint  a  new  trial,  and  relying  on  the 
genuine  Nicene  canon  *  which  ordered  ecclesiastical  causes 
to  be  terminated  i-n  the  respective  provincial  synods,  they 
declined  to  acknowledge  a  '  transmarine '  sentence  pro- 
nounced by  Rom«>,  in  regard  to  cases  which  had  arisen  in 
Africa  ^.  At  the  same  time,  it  must  be  remembered,  first, 
that  the  principle  of  appeal  from  a  provincial  episcopate 
to  a  patriarch  or  quasi-patriarch  had  been  admitted,  as 
to  the  East,  by  the  CEcumenical  Council  of  Chalcedon*^: 

^  Bede,  iii.  25  :  see  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  385. 

2  Walafrid  Strabo,  in  his  Life  of  St..  Gall,  speaks  of  Columban  as 
dedicating  a  church,  with  holy  water  and  chrism  and  processional 
psalmody;  Act.  SS.  Bened.  ii.  233'.  The  older  *Life'  omits  the  chrism. 
See  above,  pp.  irs,  167,  198. 

^  Sardic.  can.  3-5  ;  Mansi,  iii.  7.  The  bishop  of  Rome  was  to  order 
a  fresh  hearing  before  (i)  the  bishops  of  the  next  province  to  that  in  which 
the  case  had  arisen,  and  then,  if  the  complainant  should  be  still  dissatisfied, 
(2)  before  those  bishops  with  presbyters  delegated  from  Rome.  These 
provisions  were  quoted  by  the  agents  of  Rome  as  Nicene.  The  African 
bishops  had  never  heard  of  them,  and  ascertained  that  they  were  not 
in  the  genuine  text  of  the  Nicene  canons  ;  and  the  only  *  council  of 
Sardica '  which  they  knew  of  was  the  Arian  rival  assembly  at  Philip- 
popolis,  which  had  usurped  the  name  of  the  true  council.  A  traditional 
confusion  of  this  sort  might  have  caused  the  canons  to  be  first 
neglected,  then  forgotten,  in  Africa.  There  is  nothing  in  their  provisions 
about  appeals  which  is  inconsistent  with  Western  feeling  in  343.  They 
grant  to  Julius  of  Rome  a  strictly  limited  power  in  such  cases  :  see  *  The 
Roman  See  in  the  Early  Church/  &c.,  p.  89. 

*  Nic.  can.  5. 

^  See  their  final  letter,  Mansi,  iv.  515  ;  Puller,  Prim.  Saints,  p.  197. 

•  Chalc.  can.  9,  directing  a  bishop  or  cleric  who  had  a  complaint  against 


324  Wilfrid's  appeal  to  Rome, 

CHAP.  X.  and  next,  that  the  relations  in  which  the  African  Church 
stood  towards  Rome  in  426  were  not  those  in  which  the 
English  Church  stood  towards  Rome  in  678.  During  that 
interval,  the  first  see  in  Christendom,  the  one  'Apostolic 
see '  in  the  West,  had  grown  mightily  in  all  the  elements 
of  command :  and  even  if  Wilfrid  had  admitted  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  African  Council,  he  would  have  pleaded  that 
a  Church  so  recently  founded  as  the  English,  and  so 
recently  consolidated  by  a  metropolitan  sent  from  Rome 
direct,  the  successor  of  that  first  English  archbishop  whom 
•  Rome,  in  the  person  of  the  sainted  Gregory,  had  sent  to 
plant  the  faith  among  English  heathens,  might  naturally  and 
rightly  look  to  Rome  for  guidance  in  cases  of  emergency, 
and  that  guidance  implied  supervision,  to  be  exercised 
on  appeal ;  and  further,  that  whereas  causes  were  decided 
in  Africa  with  all  due  ecclesiastical  forms,  the  very  rudi- 
ments of  ecclesiastical  justice  were  ignored  by  the  recent 
partition  of  a  diocese  in  the  bishop's  absence,  and  without 
his  consent^,  and  his  actual  deprivation  after  he  had 
spoken  of  applying  to  Rome  for  remedy.  But  Wilfrid 
would  not  have  admitted  the  African  principle.  It  is  true 
that  he  had  not  thought  out  as  formulated  a  theory  which 
would  assign  to  Rome  an  ordinary  right  of  intervention 
in  all  the  domestic  affairs  of  his  native  Church  ^ ;  it  was 
in  a  case  which  he  fairly  regarded  as  extreme  that  he 
looked  to  Rome  for  the  justice  denied  him  in  England. 
But  he  had  a  feeling  for  Rome  which  was  fed  and  sustained 
by  cherished  personal  recollections,  and  he  was  ready  to 
yield  more  to  her,  in  practical  Church  action,  than  the 
bishops  who  wrote  in  such  plain  terms  to  Celestine  I. 
And  whatever  respect  he  may  have  felt  for  the  great 
names  of  the  Gallican  Church,  he  would  probably  have 
disapproved  of  the  conduct  of  Hilary  of  Aries  in  reference 
to  the  appeal  of  Celidonius  from  a  Gallic  Council  ^  and 

his  metropolitan  to  appeal  to  the  exarch  of  the  *  diocese '  (aggregate  of 
provinces),  or  to  the  see  of  Constantinople. 

^  Theodore  might  have  remembered  Cod.  Afric.  c.  56,  98,  which  ex- 
pressly forbade  this.     Mansi,  iii.  749,  803. 

^  This  is  well  put  in  Wakeman's  Hist,  of  the  Church  of  England,  p.  38. 

^  See  Puller,  Prim.  Saints,  &c.  p.  206. 


General  English  feeling  not  zvith  him,    325 

would  have  regarded  the  conduct  of   Leo   the  Great   as    chap,  x, 
simply  a  just  assertion  of  authority ;  inhering  in  the  chief 
bishop  of  the  West. 

But  his  ideas  on  this  point  were  not  shared  by  the  great 
body  of  English  clergy  and  laity.  They  stood,  indeed, 
in  different  degrees  of  obligation  to  the  Roman  Church. 
She  was  directly  a  mother-Church  to  Kent,  and  also  to 
Wessex;  indirectly  and  originally  to  East-Anglia;  in  a 
limited  sense,  considering  the  retreat  of  Paulinus,  to  North- 
umbria ;  in  a  technical  but  ineffective  sense,  considering 
the  failure  of  Mellitus,  to  Essex,  including  London;  not 
at  all,  Lindsey  excepted,  to  Mercia.  In  so  far  as  the 
several  dioceses  had  been  welded  together  in  subordination 
to  Canterbury,  they  were  debtors  through  Canterbury 
to  its  spiritual  parent;  and  they  had  all  concurred  in 
accepting  Theodore  as  a  special  gift  from  the  hands  of 
Rome.  They  all,  though  probably  not  all  with  equal 
definiteness  of  conception,  acknowledged  in  Rome  a  peculiar 
pre-eminence,  a  special  heritage  of  apostolic  grace;  to  all 
of  them  'the  See  of  Peter'  was  a  title  of  august  and 
sacred  import,  and  they  were  too  simple  to  analyze  its 
significance,  or  to  test  its  grounds.  But,  with  all  this, 
they  had  not,  as  a  body,  in  678,  any  clear  notion  that 
gratitude  or  reverence  on  their  part  meant  a  definite 
control  on  Rome's  ^  and  perhaps  the  more  far  sighted 
among  them  apprehended  with  good  reason  that  if  a 
foreign  appellate  jurisdiction  were  admitted  in  one  case, 
the  precedent  was  sure  to  have  consequences  in  others. 
The  aversion  to  '  outlandish '  authority,  keen  and  strong 
in  the  insular  mind  even  through  the  later  Middle 
Ages,  was  now,  in  Northumbria,  even  scornfully  incre- 
dulous  as   to   any   practical  exercise  of   such   authority; 

^  See  Freeman,  i.  32  :  *  The  English  Church,  reverencing  Rome,  hut  not 
slavishly  bowing  down  to  her,'&c.  Comp.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist,  i.246,  280. 
It  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  assume  that  the  language  of  Wilfrid  or  of 
Eddi  about  the  Roman  see  would  have  been  accepted  by  all  their  con- 
temporary churchmen  ;  and  the  most  '  Roman  '  minds  of  that  age  would 
have  been  astounded  at  any  such  claim  of  universal  'ordinaiy  and 
immediate  jurisdiction '  as  the  Vatican  decree  of  1870  affected  to  have  been, 
from  the  first,  acknowledged  as  a  papal  prerogative. 


326  Wilfrid's  Romeward  journey 

CHAP.  X.  and,  as  far  as  we  know,  Benedict  Biscop,  with  all  that 
enthusiasm  for  Roman  sanctities  which  repeated  visits 
to  Rome  had  fostered,  never  thought,  on  his  return  from 
the  fifth  of  those  visits,  or  afterwards,  of  taking  Wilfrid's 
part  in  this  quarrel.  As  for  Theodore  himself,  he  was 
duly  conscious  of  the  value  of  his  Papal  appointment, 
but  he  was  not  minded  to  be  a  mere  Roman  legate,  nor 
willing  to  let  his  administration  be  overruled  by  Papal 
intervention  on  appeal.  The  increased  stringency  of  his 
acts  after  that  appeal  is  one  of  the  most  significant  facts 
in  this  portion  of  the  story  ^ 

Ebroin.  And  now  let  us  follow  the  dauntless  and  indefatigable 

appellant.  His  biographer  assures  us  ^  that  his  foes,  in 
their  eagerness  to  arrest  his  course,  had  requested  Ebroin, 
as  mayor  of  the  palace  for  the  Frankish  king  of  Neustria 
and  Burgundy, — the  feeble  Theoderic  III, — to  seize  on 
Wilfrid  if  he  passed  through  that  kingdom,  and  either 
send  him  into  exile,  or  kill  his  attendants  and  strip  him 
of  his  property.  It  is  curious  that  the  same  formidable 
minister  should  have  checked  Theodore's  journey  through 
Gaul,  and  set  men  in  wait  to  fall  upon  Wilfrid.  But, 
in  fact,  Ebroin  had  his  own  reasons,  quite  independent 
of  English  disputes,  for  hostility  towards  the  man  who, 
in  the  days  of  his  splendour  and  wealth  at  York,  had 
materially  contributed  to  the  elevation  of  the  young  king 
of  Austrasia,  Dagobert  II,  lately  at  war  with  Theoderic 
about  frontiers.  And  Ebroin's  hatred  was  deadly :  it  was 
in  the  October  of  this  very  year  678  that  he  put  to  death 
his  old  rival  Leodegar,  or  *  St.  Leger,'  bishop  of  Autun  ^. 

Seizure  of  But  on  this  occasion  he  missed  his  blow :  his  emissaries 
'"  ^^  •    did   catch   and   despoil   an   English   bishop,  whose   name 

^  Nor  did  he,  as  we  shall  see,  take  any  steps  towards  conforming  to  the 
papal  judgement  in  favour  of  Wilfrid  until  six  years  after  it  was  made 
known  to  him. 

^  Eddi,  25  :  '  Praemiserunt  nuntios  ...  ad  Eadefyrwine  impium  dueem. 

2  See  Alb.  Butler,  Oct.  2  ;  Fredegar.  Contin.  96 ;  Kitchin,  Hist.  Fr. 
i.  94.  The  tyranny  of  Ebroin  had  been  interrupted  for  a  time  by  his 
forced  withdrawal  into  a  monastery.  But  he  had  speedily  emerged,  set 
up  a  rival  king,  and  in  675  obliged  Theoderic  to  'come  to  terms  with 
him'  (L'Art  de  Verifier,  v.  415).  He  held  supreme  power  until  he  was 
murdered  '  by  a  private  enemy'  in  681  (Oman,  Europ.  Hist.  p.  200). 


broken  by  mission  work  in  Friesland.    327 

was  identical  with  Wilfrid's  except  in  a  single  letter,—    chap.  x. 
Witifrid,  the  deposed  prelate  of  Lichfield,  then  travelling, 
for  his  misfortune,  in  Neustria.     He  was  cruelly  maltreated 
and  some  of  his  attendants  were  actually  slain'.     Wilfrid  Wilfrid  in 
had  not  landed  in  Gaul :   he  had  proceeded  to  Friesland,  Friesland. 
the  land  beyond  the  Zuyder  Zee,  the  inhabitants  of  which 
dwelt  nearer  to  Britain  than  Saxons  or  Angles  or  Jutes 
had  dwelt  while  still  on  the  mainland,  and  are   named 
by  Bede  as  first  among  six  nations  akin  to  the  English, 
and  '  corruptly  called  Germans  '  by  the  Britons  ^.     Adalgis, 
the  Frisian  king,  received  the   English   prelate  with  all 
lionour^,  and  was  rewarded  by  hearing  the  Gospel  from 
his  lips.     And   here,  more  brightly  than   at  .any   earlier 
period  of  his  life,  shone  out  the  true  Christian  greatness 
of  '  St.  Wilfrid.'    He  was  far  too  earnest  in  the  cause  of 
religion  not  to  make   every  other  purpose  give  way  to 
a  good  opportunity  of  missionary  work,  such  as  he  found 
among  the  Frisians.    He  preached,  with  the  king's  licence,  Conver- 
every  day*,  expounding fthe  main  doctrines  of  Christianity,  ^^^^ 
— the  Holy  Trinity,  '  the  one  baptism  for  remission  of  sins,  Frisians, 
and  eternal  life,  after   death,   in   resurrection"^.'     As   the 
year's  fishing  was  unusually  successful,  and  the  autumn 
brought  an  abundant  harvest,  the  simple-hearted  people 
ascribed  these  blessings  to  the  God  whom  Wilfrid  served ; 
and  before   winter  set  in  he  had,  after  due  instruction, 
baptized    many   of   the  commonalty,   and  most   of   their 

^  Cp.  Eddi,  25,  on  his  misfortune :  *  Omni  pecunia  spoliatus,  multisque 
ex  sociis  suis  occisis,  misere  ad  extremum  sanctum  episcopum  nudum 
reliquerunt  .  .  .  errore  h(ym  unius  syllabae  seducti.*  So  Malmesbury  : 
'Luit  ergo  ille  ambiguitatem  vocabuli ; '  G.  P.  p.  221.  Fridegod,  'tantum 
monogrammate  lusus.* 

*  Bede,  v.  9.  See  Freeman,  i.  22.  '  In  mythical  genealogies,  Saxo  and 
Friso  are  brothers  ; '  Pearson,  Hist.  Engl.  i.  105.  We  read  of  a  young 
Northumbrian  being  sold  as  a  slave  to  a  Frisian  in  London,  Bede,  iv.  22. 

^  Malmesb.  1.  c.  :  *  Ejectus  a  patria,  dilectus  in  Frisia.' 

*  Eddi,  26.  On  the  great  historical  importance,  to  a  large  portion  of  the 
continent,  of  this  sojourn  of  Wilfrid  in  Friesland,  see  Lappenberg,  i.  181. 

^  Eddi,  1.  c.  A  definite  instruction  in  Christian  doctrine,  a  systematic 
*  delivery  of  the  creed,'  was  in  ancient  times  held  essential  to  all  Christian 
proselytism.  Compare  St.  Augustine,  de  Catechizandis  Rudibus,  s.  52 ; 
and  Alcuin,  Ep.  28  (a.  d.  796),  on  such  orderly  teaching  before  baptism. 
See  Neale's  Essays  on  Liturgiology,  p.  146  ;  and  above,  p.  137. 


328  Wilfrid  in  Friesland 

CHAP.  X.  chiefs.  Then  a  striking  scene  followed.  Ebroin  sent  to 
Adalgis,  promising  with  an  oath,  in  written  words,  to 
give  him  'a  bushel  full  of  golden  solidi'  for  Wilfrids 
person  or  for  Wilfrid's  head  ^.  The  letter  was  read  to  the 
king  at  a  feast,  probably  the  great  midwinter  feast,  in  the 
presence  of  Wilfrid  and  his  companions.  He  heard  it  read 
through,  took  the  scroll  into  his  hands,  tore  it  deliberately 
to  pieces,  and  flung  them  into  the  fire  burning  before  him. 
Then,  turning  to  the  startled  messengers  of  the  powerful 
Frank,  he  spoke  out  his  indignation  ^.  '  Tell  your  lord 
what  I  now  say  :  So  may  the  Maker  of  all  things  tear 
in  pieces  and  utterly  consume  the  life  and  kingdom  of 
one  who  is  forsworn  to  his  God,  and  keeps  not  the  covenant 
into  which  he  has  entered  ! '  'It  was  thus  decreed '  to 
Wilfrid  to  be  the  first  of  the  long  line  of  English  mission- 
aries ^  He  '  spent  the  winter  happily,'  as  Bede  expresses 
it,  'with  the  new  people  of  God*;'  but  the  impression 
then  made  on  the  Frisian  mind  must  have  been  to  a  great 
extent  superficial,  for  about  ten  years  later  we  find  that 
a  devoted  missionary  'preached  for  two  years  to  the  same 
nation  without  seeing  any  fruit  of  all  his  toil  among 
his  barbarian  hearers  ^ ' ;  when,  shortly  afterwards,  Willi- 
brord  and  Wulframn  began  to  work  among  them,  they 
found  a  great  ignorance  of  the  first  principles  of  Chris- 
tianity; and  to  the  close  of  the  century.  Pagan  reaction 
was  periodical  in  Frisia  ^\     As  was  often  the  case  in  these 

'  Eddi,  27.  A  golden  *  solidus '  was  then  =  forty  silver  c'enarii ;  in  the 
next  century  it  was  lowered  to  the  value  of  twelve.     See  Ducange. 

2  See  the  words  in  Eddi,  27  :  *  Sic  rerum  Creator  regnum  et  vitam 
in  Deo  suo  perjurantis,  pactumque  initum  non  custodientis,  scindens 
destruat,  et  consumens  in  favillam  divellat.'  Comp.  Oman,  Europ.  Hist. 
476-918,  p.  284,  '  the  Frisians  of  the  Klune-mouth,  a  race  which  the 
Merovings  had  never  subdued.' 

^  Lappenberg,  i.  181.  Among  the  English  missionaries  of  the  succeeding 
period  were  Willibrord,  the  Hewalds,  Bonifaoe,  Lull,  Albert,  Lebwin, 
Marcheim,  Willehad. 

*  Bede,  v.  19 :  *  Cum  nova  Dei  plebe  feliciter  exigens.'  Comp.  Eddi, 
26  :  *  Populum  multum  Domino  lucratus.'     So  Fridegod,  665. 

^  See  the  touching  account  of  Wictbert  in  Bede,  v.  9. 

»  Alcuin,  Vit.  S.  Willibr.  i.  6;  Vit.  S.  Wulfr.  3  ;  Vit.  S.  Liudgeri,  i.  3  : 
*  In  diebus  Radbodi  .  .  .  gens  ilia  ...  in  errore  infidelitatis  erat  excaecata.* 
Alb.  Butler  says  (Nov.  7)  that  'the  seeds  sown  by  Wilfrid  must  have 


and  in  Lombardy.  329 

wholesale  conversions,  the   seed  had   at  first   sprung   up   chap.  x. 
rapidly,  '  because  it  had  no  depth  of  earth.' 

In  the  spring  of  679  Wilfrid  resumed  his  journey, 
and  was  warmly  welcomed  in  Austrasia  by  his  former 
client  Dagobert,  who  in  gratitude  urged  him  to  accept  the 
see  of  Strasburg^  and,  failing  in  this,  did  his  best  for 
his  benefactor  by  loading  him  with  presents,  and  sending 
him  on  southwards  under  the  guidance  of  a  Frankish 
bishop  named  Deodatus.  Crossing  the  Alps,  he  descended  Wilfrid 
into  Lombardy,  and  was  kindly  received  at  Pa  via  by  b^rdy"^' 
King  Perctarit  \  a  pious  prince,  a  devout  Catholic,  and 
altogether  a  very  different  personage  from  the  Lombards 
who  had  kept  St.  Gregory  in  such  alarm.  He  had  had 
many  troublous  experiences,  extending  from  his  exile  in  662 
to  his  restoration  in  671.  He  told  Wilfrid  that  he  had 
received  overtures  from  Britain  to  the  effect  that  if  he 
would  detain  '  the  runaway  bishop '  on  his  journey,  he 
should  receive  'very  great  gifts';  and  had  answered  by 
referring  to  those  early  days  when  he,  too,  was  a  fugitive 
from  the  usurper  Grimoald,  and  found  shelter  in  Pannonia 
with  the  Khan  of  the  Avars.  '  He,  a  Pagan,  swore  by  his 
idol  to  befriend  me,  and  answered  Grimoald's  offers  of 
a  bushel  of  golden  solidi  by  saying,  "  May  the  gods  cut  my 

been  almost  rooted  out  before  St.  Willibrord's  arrival  in  690  or  691.' 
St.  Boniface  worked  under  him  for  three  years,  and  long  afterwards 
met  his  death  in  '  the  still  Pagan  portion  of  Friesland '  (^Maclear),  where 
he  had  to '  drive  away  Pagan  rites,'  and  baptized  *  multa  millia  hominum  * 
before  he  was  martyred  ;  Willibald,  Vit.  S.  Bonif.  c.  11.  Comp.  Bonif. 
Ep.  90.  Yet  later,  in  772,  Willehad  the  Northumbrian  (Vit.  Will.  c.  i) 
heard  tliat  the  Frisians,  'hactenus  pagani,'  began  to  desire  baptism  ; 
and  on  arriving  in  Frisia,  was  well  received  by  St.  Boniface's  converts, 
but  narrowly  escaped  with  life  from  their  Pagan  countrymen.  Again, 
Liudger  had  to  destroy  '  various  idolatries '  in  Frisia  ;  Vit.  Liudg.  i.  14  : 
but  his  work  had  to  stand  the  test  of  two  Pagan  persecutions. 

^  'The  greatest  see  in  his  realm,'  at  *  Streithbyrg' ;  Eddi,  28. 

^  Or  Bertarid.  Eddi  calls  him  'Berhther  king  of  Campania,'  by 
a  mistake.  When  he  died  in  688,  he  'carried  with  him  the  regrets 
of  his  subjects,  whose  hearts  he  had  won  by  his  gentle  and  wise  rule.* 
See  L'Art  de  Verifier,  iv.  385  ;  and  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  her  Invaders, 
vi.  242  ff.  '  Justitiae  tenax,  mitis  per  omnia  et  suavis ; '  Paul.  Diac. 
Gest,  Lang.  v.  33,  37.  In  673,  he  built  a  monastery  on  the  scene  of 
a  former  escape.  Fridegod,  719,  makes  him  talk  to  Wilfrid  'post  epulas, 
et  post  grati  carchesia  Bacchi ! ' 


330 


The  Roman  Council 


and  at 
Rome. 


Council 
of  fifty 
bishops. 


life  asunder,  if  I  thus  forswear  myself  to  them."  How 
much  more  am  I,  who  know  the  true  God,  bound  not  to 
ruin  my  soul,  were  it  to  gain  the  whole  world  ^ ! '  The 
good  king  sent  Wilfrid  on,  with  honour  and  due  guidance, 
to  Kome,  where  he  arrived  about  the  middle  of  679. 
Twenty-five  years  had  passed  since  he  visited  the  '  Eternal 
City '  in  the  buoyancy  of  his  enthusiastic  youth,  studied  its 
ecclesiastical  rules  under  Boniface,  prayed  habitually  in  its 
sanctuaries,  and  bowed  his  head  for  the  benediction  of 
Eugenius  I.  The  present  Pope  was  Agatho,  who  had  come 
to  the  see  in  the  summer  of  678 :  a  prelate  much  loved  for 
his  kind-heartedness  and  geniality  ^.  To  him  Theodore  had 
sent  a  monk  named  Kenwald,  with  documents  stating  his 
view  of  Wilfrid's  case :  so  that  '  the  dissension,'  as  Eddi 
says,  *  was  not  unknown  to  Agatho.'  Wilfrid  had  an 
audience  of  the  Pope,  and  placed  a  written  statement  of 
the  case  in  his  hands :  and  some  time  afterwards,  a  Council 
of  fifty  bishops,  with  presbyters  in  attendance,  was  held  by 
Agatho  for  the  formal  consideration  of  the  matter  ^.  The 
scene  was  that  illustrious  '  basilica  of  Our  Saviour  in  the 
Lateran,'  the  true  cathedral  church  of  Rome,  the  'mother 
and  head,'  in  its  own  proud  though  inaccurate  estimation, 
*  of  all  churches,'  the  prototype  of  the  metropolitan  church 
of  Canterbury.  It  was  distinguished  among  Roman  churches 
by  the  name  of '  the  Constantinian,'  and  had  been  originally 

^  Eddi,  28,  He  had  been  once  on  the  point  of  taking  shelter  in  Britain. 
The  wife  of  his  son  Cunincpert  was  an  Englishwoman,  probably  a  Kentish 
princess  (Hodgkin,  vi.  305). 

•^  Anastas.  Vit.  Pontif.  i.  135  ;  Mansi,  xi.  165.  He  was  a  Sicilian.  He 
died  Jan.  10,  682.  By  one  account,  he  came  to  the  see,  not  in  678,  but 
in  679.  Capgrave  says  of  him,  *  He  kissed  a  misel*  (leper)  'and  mad  him 
hool ; '  Chronicle,  p.  97. 

^  In  Mansi,  xi.  179,  is  an  account  of  a  Koman  council  of  sixteen  bishops, 
held  in  October,  679,  on  episcopal  dissensions  in  Britain,  but  without 
express  reference  to  Wilfrid, — on  the  number  of  the  Bishoprics,  which 
were  to  be  twelve  with  the  archbishopric, — on  tlie  conduct  of  the  clergy, — 
and  for  a  council  of  bishops,  kings,  princes,  &c.  in  '  all  Saxony,'  to  be 
held  by  Theodore.  But  '  Eddius,  Bede,  and  William  of  Malmesbury,  all 
know  nothing  of  this  council'  (Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  135),  which  pro- 
fesses to  have  sent  John  the  Precentor  to  Britain,  with  the  canons  of  the 
council  of  649.  It  rests  on  one  MS.  of  Spelman's ;  it  suits  neither  the 
time  before  nor  after  Wilfrid's  arrival ;  and  it  reads  (like  too  much  else) 
as  if  concocted  in  the  interest  of  Canterbury. 


on   Wilfrid's  case,  331 

erected  by  the  great  imperial  convert  in  the  latter  part  chap.  x. 
of  his  reign  ^.  Like  his  other  and  grander  basilica  of  St. 
Peter,  it  had  five  aisles:  but  the  baptistery  of  St.  John, 
from  which  it  popularly  acquired  the  name  that  erelong 
superseded  its  august  dedication  ^,  was  a  work  of  the  fifth 
century^.  The  church,  for  all  its  unique  dignity,  had 
associations  which  to  a  thoughtful  prelate  would  speak  as 
forcibly  of  ecclesiastical  troubles  as  of  ecclesiastical  majesty 
and  strength.  For  the  chapel  of  St.  John  the  Evangelist  * 
was  a  memorial  of  Pope  Hilary's  narrow  escape  from  the 
'  Robbers'  Council '  at  Ephesus  ^  :  and  only  twenty-six  years 
had  elapsed  since  Pope  Martin  had  been  dragged  out  of  the 
basilica  by  the  imperial  'exarch,'  and  carried  away  from 
Rome  for  maintaining,  at  a  Council  held  on  that  same  spot, 
the  Catholic  doctrine  which  an  emperor  had  silenced^. 
The  present  Council,  like  the  former,  met  in  the  'secretarium' 
of  the  church,  the  chamber  which  served  as  the  place  for 
meetings  of  the  bishop  and  clergy,  and  the  transaction 
of   ecclesiastical   business"^.      Wilfrid,   at   first,   was   kept 

^  Fergusson,  Hist.  Archit.  i.  369 ;  cp.  36a.  Martin  I  describes  the 
Constantinian  church  as  *  juxta  episcopium,'  Ep.  15,  Mansi,  x.  851.  See 
Alb.  Butler,  Nov.  9,  'Dedication  of  the  Church  of  Our  Saviour.'  The 
present  church  has  been  sadly  modernized  by  various  popes  ;  but  Leo  XIII 
has  done  much  to  restore  its  beauty.  The  mosaic  head  of  our  Lord  looks 
down  from  the  sanctuary  arch  as  it  did  in  Wilfrid's  time,  and  long 
before. 

^  The  re-dedication  as  'St.  John  Baptist's,'  is  thought  to  have  taken 
place  soon  afterwards  ;  Hodgkin,  vi.  260. 

^  Hemans,  Hist,  and  Monum.  Rome,  p.  658. 

*  In  the  Lateran  baptistery,  made  '  ex  argento  et  lapidibus  pretiosis,' 
Anastas.  Vit.  Pont.  i.  76.  It  has  lost  its  antique  beauty  :  but  over  its 
door  *  Biligite  alterutrum '  recalls  the  touching  tradition  about  St.  John's 
brief  sermon  in  his  old  age. 

*  Hemans,  1.  c.     Hay,  Walks  in  Rome,  ii.  61. 

®  Mansi,  x.  852  ;  Hefele,  Hist.  Councils,  b.  16.  c.  i.  s.  309  ;  Milman,  ii. 
325  ;  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  iii.  854 . 

'  '  Secretarium '  was  a  Roman  law-term  for  the  justice-room  of  a  magis- 
trate (compare  the  '  secretum '  which  Paul  of  Samosata  made  for  himself, 
Euseb.  vii.  30),  as  in  Act.  Scill.  Mart.,  '  in  secretario  Carthaginis ; '  comp. 
Act.  Procons.  S.  Cypr.,  'Carthagine  in  secretario.'  Ecclesiastically,  the 
word  has  two  senses :  (i)  a  room  where  bishops  received  the  greetings  of 
their  people  ('salutatorium,'  Greg.  Ep.  v.  56),  transacted  business,  held 
meetings  of  clergy,  or  sat  in  synod  :  the  second  council  of  Aries  forbade 
deacons  to  sit  in  the  secretarium  with  the  priests.  So  the  council  of 
Hippo  in  393  met  *in  secretario  basilicae  Pacis,'  Mansi,  iii.  732;  other 


332  Wilfrid's  Memorial 

waiting  outside  the  doors,  as  was  usual  in  regard  to 
petitioners  or  appellants.  Agatho  began  by  stating  the 
business :  they  were  met  to  consider  a  dissension  which  had 
arisen  in  the  Churches  of  Britain.  The  bishops  of  Ostia 
and  of  Portus  Romanus  then  said  ^  that  they  had  read  the 
memorials  presented  on  both  sides, — those  which  had  come 
from  Theodore  and  others^  'against  a  certain  bishop  who, 
as  they  assert,  has  fled  privily  away,  and,  as  they  suppose, 
has  come  hither,'  and  the  counter-memorial  embodying  the 
appeal  of  the  '  bishop  of  the  holy  church  of  York ' :  and 
that  they  found  Wilfrid  to  have  committed  no  offence 
which  would  canonically  require  his  degradation,  and  to 
have  '  observed  moderation  by  not  mixing  himself  up  in 
any  factious  strife  ^.'  Agatho  then  ordered  that  Wilfrid 
should  be  admitted  into  the  '  secretarium,'  with  the  petition 
which  he  was  said  to  have  brought.  He  entered  accordingly, 
and  desired  that  his  petition  should  be  read.  '  John,  the 
Notary,  read  it  to  the  Council.'  Its  purport  was  as  follows. 
Wilfrid,  a  humble  and  unworthy  bishop  of  *  Saxony '  "*,  had 

councils,  at  Carthage,  in  the  secretarium  of  the  basilica  Restituta,  ib.  ; 
or  of  that  of  Faustus,  ib.  699 ;  the  second  of  Seville,  in  that  of  the  Holy- 
Jerusalem  Church,  ib.  x.  557  :  and  so  the  council  of  Constantinople,  a.d. 
448,  in  Flavian's  secretarium,  ib.  vi.  651.  Hence,  the  sittings  of  the  first 
Lateran  council  are  called  '  secretarii ' ;  and  see  pope  Zacharias,  '•  praate- 
rito  secretario,'  Migne,  Patr.  Lat.  Ixxxix.  833.  Compare  Greg.  Ep.  i.  19, 
and  Benedict,  note  there,  and  Ep.  iii.  56.  The  '  lesser  secretarium '  was 
(2)  a  vestry  or  sacristy,  '  which  the  Greeks  call  Diaconicon  ; '  Council  of 
Agde,  c.  66,  Mansi,  viii.  336  :  so  in  Bede,  ii.  i.  Gregory  is  buried  'ante 
secretarium  '  ;  and  iii.  14,  26  on  the  'secretaria'  of  Rochester  and  Lindis- 
farne.  Above,  p.  182.  In  old  St.  Peter's  the  secretarium  or  vestry  was 
'  between  the  middle  doorway  of  the  nave  and  the  southwest  corner  : ' 
Lanciani,  Pagan  and  Christian  Rome,  p.  222. 

^  Malmesbury,  G.  P.  p.  226,  abbreviates  their  speech,  as  given  by  Eddi, 
29.     It  begins  with  an  assertion  of  papal  supremacy. 

^  Including,  apparently,  Hilda ;  Eddi,  54.  Malmesbury  reckons  her 
among  the  bitter  enemies  of  Wilfrid ;  G.  Pontif,  iii.  107.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  several  saintly  persons  in  Northumbria  took  the  same 
line,  and  Bede  apparently  thought  that  they  were  right. 

^  'Neque  secundum  sanctorum  canonum  subtilitatem  convictum  cum 
de  aliquibus  facinoribus,  et  ideo  non  canonice  dejectum,  reperimus  .  .  . 
potius  autem  et  modestiam  hunc  tenuisse  perpendimus,'  &c.,  Eddi,  29. 

*  *  Saxonia '  was  sometimes  used  for  what  we  should  call  England.  So 
Adamnan,  Vit.  Col.  i.  i,  9,  ii.  46  ;  cp.  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  xlv,  and  '  Four 
Masters,'  a.  684.  So  Huaetbert  of  Wearmouth,  writing  to  Gregory  II ; 
Bede's  Hist.  Abb.  14.     Boniface  speaks  of  '  Saxony- beyond-Sea '  j  Ep.  49: 


read  to  the  Council,  333 

by  divine  guidance  come  to  this  '  apostolical  summit  \'  as 
to  a  fortified  place  and  tower  of  strength,  from  whence  the 
rule  of  the  canons  was  communicated  to  all  the  Churches. 
The  Pope  would  know,  from  his  private  interview  with 
Wilfrid,  and  from  the  memorial  already  presented  2,  that 
'  certain  invaders  of  his  bishopric,  not  one  only,  but  three,' 
had,  '  at  a  meeting  of  Archbishop  Theodore  and  other  pre- 
lates,' presumed  to  take  away  the  see  which  he  had  held 
for  more  than  ten  years,  and   uncanonically  to   promote 
themselves  to  be  bishops  '  in  his  own  church '  during  his 
lifetime  ;  and  that  Theodore  had  consecrated  them  without 
his  assent,  and  even  '  without  the  assent  of  any  bishop.' 
It  was  not  for  him  to  ask  why  this  was  done  :    he  would 
refrain  from  accusing  one  who  had  been  sent  ^  from  that 
apostolical  see.     It  would  appear  that  he  had  been  expelled 
without   having   been   convicted  of   any  canonical   fault: 
yet,   after    such    treatment,   he   had   raised   no    seditious 
contention,  but  had  invoked  the  assistance  of  Rome,  and 
'  simply  called  the  comprovincial  bishops  to  bear  witness ' 
to  the  proceeding.     He  would  accept  any  decision  from  the 
Council.     If  he  were  placed  in  his  old  see,  let  the  invaders 
be  synodically  ejected  *.     If,  again,  it  was  resolved  to  have 
more  bishops  in  Northumbria,  let  them  at  least  be  chosen 
from  the  clergy  of  his  church  by  a  provincial  synod  ^,  so 
that  he,  Wilfrid,  might  '  serve  God  with  them  in  peaceful 
unity.'     We  must  pause  a  moment  to  observe  that  this 
statement  suppresses  what,  no  doubt,  was  prominent   in 
Theodore's, — the   fact  that  the   subject   of    a   division   of 

cp.  S.  Greg.  Ep.  xi.  64.  Kenulf  of  Mercia  gays  that  Augustine  'ecclesiis 
praefuit  Saxoniae  * ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  522. 

^  'Apostolatus  vester'  was  a  common  form  of  address  to  the  pope  as 
'apostolicus,'  successor  of  St.  Peter  :  Liber  Diurnus,  No.  2  ff. 

"^  'Quae  viva  voce  praesentialiter  intimavi,  et  per  satisfactionem  peti- 
tionis  scriptis  narrantibus  obtuli ; '  Eddi,  30. 

^  '  Directus.'     So  in  Andrew's  speech.     See  above,  p.  258. 

*  'De  pristinis  parochiis  ecclesiae.'  Here  'parochiae'  is  used  somewhat 
laxly,  as  if  to  mean,  '  from  those  newly-erected  bishoprics  which  originally 
and  properly  formed  parts  of  the  diocese  of  York.' 

'  '  Et  si  rursus  in  eadem  parochia,  cui  praefui,  praesules  adhibere 
providerit,  saltem  tales  jubeat  praevidere  promovendos  .  .  .  .'  Again, 
*  Si  ita  placuerit  archiepiscopo  et  coepiscopis  meis  ut  augeatur  numerus 
episcoporum,'  &c. 


334    The  Council  decides  in  favour  of  Wilfrid, 

CHAP.  X.  dioceses  had  been  mooted  years  before  at  the  synod  of 
Hertford,  and  had  been  acted  upon  in  East-Anglia.  It 
might  also  be  inferred  from  Wilfrid's  paper  that  Theodore's 
first  notion  had  been  to  take  from  him  even  York  itself ; 
and,  certainly,  that  Bosa,  Eata,  and  Eadhed  were  strangers 
to  the  Northumbrian-  diocese, — which  was  the  reverse  of 
Decision     the  fact.     After  a  few  eulosfistic  words  from  Af^atho  on 

in  favour     .  i  ^  .  «  r-A 

ofWilfrid.  the  moderation  of  the  appellant's  conduct,  the  Council 
pronounced  its  decision.  Let  us  carefully  observe  what 
this  came  to.  Wilfrid  was  to  be  reinstated  in  his  original 
diocese,  that  is,  the  diocese  as  it  stood  before  the  division '. 
The  bishops  who  had  been  irregularly  promoted  were,  '  as 
a  matter  of  course,'  to  be  expelled.  But,  ivlien  this  was 
done,  he  was,  with  consent  of  a  council  to  be  assembled 
at  York,  '  to  choose  bishops  as  assistants  ^,  with  whom  he 
could  live  peaceably,'  and  who  were  to  be  consecrated  by 
Theodore.  The  advantages  of  diocesan  subdivision  were 
thus  to  be  secured,  but  without  the  sacrifice  of  due  order  : 
Theodore's  work  was  to  be  undone,  that  it  might  be  done 
over  again  in  a  better  way.  The  usual  penalties  were  then 
denounced  against  all  who  should  '  attempt  to  resist  this 
sentence,  or  not  receive  it  obediently,  or,  after  a  time, 
attempt  to  infringe  it  in  whole  or  part.'  Such  a  person, 
if  bishop,  priest,  or  deacon,  was  to  be  deprived  and  put 
under  anathema:  if  clerk  (i.e.  in  any  order  below  the 
diaconate)  or  monk,  or  la3mian  of  any  rank,  or  king,  he 
was  to  be  excluded  from  the  Holy  Communion.  On  the  other 
hand,  whosoever  should  sincerely  accept  and  help  to  carry 
out  the  decision,  might  well  hope  to  '  be  Divinely  rewarded 
for  that  obedience  which  God  prefers  to  all  sacrifices.' 

Such  was  the  issue  of  the  Roman  Council.  Wilfrid 
indulged  himself  by  staying  in  Rome  until  the  spring  of 
680.  To  him  it  was  doubtless  a  time  of  intense  refresh- 
ment ;  and  on  the  following  Easter  Tuesday,  March  27,  680, 
the  Pope  gave  him  a  token  of  support  which  must  have 
yet  further  inspirited  so  devoted  a  client  of  Rome.    A  large 

^  '  Decernimus  ut  episcopatum,  quern  nuper  habuerat,  recipiat,'  Eddi,  32. 
"^  'Adjutores.'     This   is  not  to   be  understood  of  mere  coadjutors  or 
assistant  bishops  in  an  undivided  diocese.     Compare  Bede,  Ep.  to  Egb.  5. 


He  takes  part  in  a  larger  Council.       335 

Council  of  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  prelates  met  on  chap.  x. 
that  day  to  provide  materials  for  the  expected  Council  ^T^^^^ 
at  Constantinople  on  the  question  of  Monothelitism  ^.  bishops. 
Wilfrid  'having  been  acquitted/  as  the  Council-record 
says,  'on  matters  certain  and  uncertain/  i.e.  on  charges 
definite  and  indefinite,  sat  in  this  assembly  as  bishop 
of  York,  and  professed  the  orthodox  doctrine  of  the  '  two 
wills  and  activities '  of  the  one  Christ  in  behalf  of  '  all  the 
northern  part  of  Britain  and  Ireland,  and  the  islands, 
which  were  inhabited  by  the  nations  of  the  Angles  and 
Britons,  and  also  of  the  Scots  and  Picts  '^ ' :  and  was  even 
described  in  the  catalogue  as  representative  of  the  '  synod ' 
or  episcopal  college  of  Britain  ^ :  the  secretary  of  the 
Council  having  mistakenly  imagined  that  his  testimony 
to  the  orthodoxy  of  the  insular  Churches  was  given  in 
the  character  of  their  accredited  'delegate.'  He  signed 
the  synodal  letter  addressed  to  the  Emperor  Constantine  IV, 
and  his  two  brothers*  and  containing  a  long  dogmatic 
statement :  and  he  thus  committed  himself  to  the  assertion, 
that  the  Council  had 'expected  that  Theodore,  archbishop 
of  the  great  island  of  Britain,  and  philosopher,  would 
attend,  with  others  who  still  tarried  in  Britain^'.  But 
they  came  not. 

At  last  Wilfrid  tore  himself  away  from  the  holy  places 
of  Rome.  He  had  spent  many  days  in  farewell  visits  to 
churches,  and  had  obtained  many  relics,  with  an  exact 
register  of  the  saints  to  whom  they  were  ascribed, — 
together  with  many  other  things  'for  the  adornment  of 

^  Mansi,  xi.  185  ;  Hefele,  v.  141,  E.  T.  Compare  the  council  of  Milan 
held  in  679  against  Monothelitism  ;  Mansi,  xi.  173.     See  above,  p.  253. 

^  Eddi,  53  ;  Bede,  v.  19  ;  as  Haddan  and  Stubbs  read  (iii.  140),  omitting 
the  comma  placed  after  *  parte  'by  Smith  and  Hussey,  and  inserting  '  que ' 
after  *  insulis.' 

^  Mansi,  xi.  306.  What  Wilfrid  really  meant  to  say  was^  *  I  can  assure 
you  that  in  those  countries  there  is  no  heresy  on  this  point.' 

*  Heraclius  and  Tiberius.  Mansi,  xi.  285.  See  Bury,  Later  Rom.  Emp. 
ii.  309. 

5  Mansi,  xi.  294  ;  Hefele,  v.  147.  This  expectation  shows  that  Wilfrid 
was  not  formally  accepted  by  the  council  as  delegate  for  his  own  Church  ; 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  141.  So  Bury,  ii.  315.  Did  he  wait  at  Rome  to 
meet  Theodore  ? 


33^  Wilfrid  returns  home. 


CHAP.  X.    the  house  of  God^.'     His  passage  through  Italy  was  like 
Gaul. 


Wilfrid  in  ^   triumph :    but   on   entering   the   Frankish  territory  he 


experienced  a  painful  shock.  Dagobert  of  Austrasia  had 
been  murdered  at  the  preceding  Christmas  by  a  conspiracy 
of  'dukes/  and  of  some  prelates  whom  Ebroin  had  in- 
truded into  sees,  and  whose  position  was  menaced  by 
the  young  king  2.  Eddi  tells  us  that  one  of  these  bishops 
endeavoured  to  intercept  Wilfrid,  and  represented  the 
slain  prince  as  having  played  the  part  of  Rehoboam,  by 
despising  the  bishops  and  laying  burdens  on  his  people. 
Wilfrid  appears  to  have  given  a  softer  answer  than  the 
case  merited  2,  but  one  which  had  the  effect  of  shaming 
the  Frankish  prelate  by  its  very  gentleness.  '  Woe  to  me, 
a  sinner ! '  he  rejoined :  '  thou  art  more  righteous  than  I.' 
Keturn  to  Wilfrid  pursued  his  journey  until  he  once  more  found 
bria  "^  himself  at  home.  And  then  came  the  shock  of  a  supreme 
disappointment.  He  had,  in  fact,  been  too  much  elated  by 
his  success  at  the  Roman  Council  to  estimate  the  situation 
as  it  would  present  itself  in  Northumbria.  To  begin 
with,  it  is  not  easy  for  brilliant  and  fervid  natures  to 
understand  the  resisting  force  inherent  in  those  who  are 
strangers  to  their  enthusiasm.  Wilfrid  fancied,  it  seems, 
that  'the  Apostolic  See'  would  be  practically  as  potent 
a  name  to  his  countrymen  as  it  had  been  through  long 
years  to  himself.  Again,  he  forgot,  or  did  not  sufficiently 
consider,  that  the  settlement  against  which  he  could  now 
use  that  name  with  all  distinctness  and  authority  was 
one  in  which  many  interests  were  now  bound  up,  to 
which  the  king  of  the  Northumbrians  and  the  archbishop 
of  '  all  Britain '  were  alike  committed,  and  which,  if  now 
assailed,  would  call  out  national  feeling,  both  civil  and 

^  'More  suo,'  says  Eddl,  33.  Thomas  of  Ely  says  that  he  brought 
a  privilegium  for  the  monastery  of  Ely,  according  to  Etheldred's  request ; 
Vit.  S.  Eth.  19.     He  bought  one  for  Ripon  and  Hexham  ;  Eddi,  51. 

^  Mabillon,  Ann.  SS.  Bened  iv.  praef.  p.  cxlv.  '  Plusieurs  pretendent 
qu'il  est  le  meme  que  S.  Dagobert  qu'on  honore  a  Stenai.'  A  Gallic 
'duke 'was  superior  to  a  'count,'  having  several  cities  under  him,  cp. 
Greg.  Turon.  viii.  18. 

'  *  It  was  for  your  good,  not  your  harm,  that  I  exalted  him  ; '  Eddi,  33. 
Fridegod  and  Eadmer  amplify  this,  as  if  the  chief  of  the  regicides  had 
drawn  his  sword  against  Wilfrid  and  menaced  him  with  death. 


Egfrid  rejects  the  Roman  decree,        337 

ecclesiastical,  in   its   defence.      The   Roman   decree,   duly   chap.  x. 
drawn  up,  with  its  leaden  '  bullae  ^ '  and  its  '  apostolic '  seal, 
was  in  his  eyes  '  a  banner  of  victory ' :  he  never  reflected 
that  to  others  it  might  be  a  provocation  and  an  insult. 
The  first  step  which  he  took  was  to  show  himself  to  his 
monks  who   had  been  wearying  for  his  return,  and,  as 
Eddi  expresses  it,  'crying  out  to  the  Lord  with  tears;' 
the  next  was  to  visit  King  Egfrid,  offer  him  a  greeting 
of  peace,  and  exhibit  his  treasured  document,  which  he 
afterwards  showed  to  the  assembled  Witan^.     It  is  not 
difficult   to    imagine    his    amazement   when    the    reading 
of   the  decree  was  interrupted  by  angry  dissent  on  the 
part  of  '  some  persons  present,'  and  then  by  an  anticipation 
of  that  bitter  complaint  which  recurred  so  often  in  later 
days :  '  The  writings  have  been  bought, — the  "  doom  "  was 
corruptly  obtained"^! '    The  line  taken  by  Egfrid  'and  his 
counsellors,'  if   we  may  believe  Eddi, — and  we  have  no 
other   informant, — was    signally   unworthy,   yet   not   im- 
politic as  an  expedient  for  the  time.     They  did  not  touch 
the  broad  question  of  Rome's  right  to  receive  the  appeal : 
they  avoided  a  long  discussion  by  a  short  cut,  assumed 
that  Wilfrid  had  got  a  verdict  by  bribing  the  tribunal, 
and   dealt   with   him   accordingly, — but   never   took   any 
measures  for   ascertaining   at   Rome   what  would   be   its 
decision  apart  from  such  influence  as  he,  by  hypothesis, 
had    used.      Eddi    affirms   that   the    prelates   'who    held 
possession  of  his  bishopric'  acquiesced  in  the  resolution 
to   '  imprison    him    for   nine   months  without   any   token 
of    respect.'      Accordingly,   everything    was    taken    from 
him  save  the  clothes  which  he  wore.    Ermenburga,  firmly 
believing  in  the  virtue  of  his  reliquary*,  appropriated  it 

^  On  the  discovery  near  Whitby  of  a  leaden  'bulla,'  bearing  the  name 
of  '  Boniface  archdeacon '  of  Rome,  see  Bishop  Browne,  Lessons  from 
E.  E.  Ch.  Hist.  p.  38.     Bishops  also  used  these  *  bullae.' 

^  Eddi,  34  :  '  Omnibus  principibus  .  .  .  necnon  servis  Dei.' 

^  Eddi,  '  Diffamaverunt  .  .  .  ut  pretio  redempta  essent  scripta.'  Hook's 
omission  of  the  reason  given  for  non-compliance  is  most  unfortunate  ; 
Archbishops,  i.  i6i.  But  the  allegation  shows  that  Rome  had  already 
a  bad  reputation  for  venality,  which  afterwards  grew  worse. 

*  *  Chrismarium,'  properly  a  vessel  containing  the   hallowed   chrism, 

Z 


338  Wilfrid  imprisoned 

CHAP.  X.  to  herself,  hung  it  up  beside  her  in  her  carriage  when 
she  drove  out,  and  kept  it  in  her  bedroom  like  a  talisman. 
Egf rid  swore  '  by  his  own  salvation '  that  none  of  Wilfrid's 
friends  should  visit  him  in  his  captivity:  they  were 
allowed  one  parting  interview,  in  which  the  undaunted 
bishop  reminded  them  of  Israel's  thraldom  in  Egypt, 
of  the  trials  of  Moses  and  the  prophets,  of  the  sufferings 
of  the  Divine  Chief  Shepherd,  of  the  great  '  teacher's ' 
exhortations  in  Heb.  xii.  i,  5  ^  He  then  passed  into  the 
custody  of  Osfrid,  the  reeve  ^  or  governor  of  a  place 
which  Eddi  calls  Bromnis,  and  which  'may,  perhaps,'  be 
identified  with  Broomridge  in  Northumberland^.  There, 
at  the  setting  in  of  the  winter,  the  bishop  was  immured 
in  a  cell  which  was  seldom  lighted  by  sunshine,  and 
never  by  a  lamp.  Darkness,  however,  had  no  terrors 
for  Wilfrid :  he  sang  his  psalms  as  regularly  as  if  he  had 
been  in  one  of  his  own  minsters,  and  the  guards  are 
said  to  have  been  awestruck  by  an  appearance  of  light 
within  the  dungeon*.  The  imprisonment  was  meant  as 
a  menace :  Egfrid  oiFered  to  give  him  back  part  of  his 
old  bishopric,  and  some  other  gifts,  if  he  would  submit 
to  royal  authority,  and  disclaim  the  genuineness  of  the 
document  brought  from  Rome.  '  I  would  rather  lose  my 
head,'  was   the   answer.     But   Osfrid,  believing   that   his 

had  come  to  be  used  for  a  *  theca  reliquiarum '  ;  see  Ducange.  He  cites 
Greg.  Turon.  de  Mirac.  S.  Mart.  iv.  32,  where  the  name  is  applied  to 
a  small  case  or  box  containing  dust  from  St.  Martin's  tomb.  Gregory's 
parents  carried  relics  about  their  persons ;  de  Gl.  Mart.  i.  84.  St.  Gall 
carried  with  him  a  *  little  case '  of  relics,  and  made  his  prayers  before  it ; 
Vit.  S.  Gall.  When  a  pagan  attempted  to  behead  St.  Willehad,  the  blow 
swerved  aside  on  the  leather  band  of  the  case  of  relics  which  '  in  collo 
suspensam  habebat ' ;  Vit.  S.  Will.  4.  The  fashion  became  very  general. 
William  the  Conqueror  (who  knew  how  to  utilize  relics  for  his  own 
purpose)  wore  a  reliquary  round  his  neck  on  the  day  of  his  great  victory  ; 
Freeman,  N.  C.  iii.  464. 

^  Eddi,  35.  The  speech  begins,  *  Be  mindful,  and  tell  my  brethren,  of 
the  days  of  old,  how  we  read,'  &c. 

^  Above,  p.  139.  The  burghreeve  or  burhgerefa  'was  essentially  a 
royal  officer,  charged  with  the  maintenance  and  defence  of  a  fortress.' 
Kemble,  Sax.  in  Engl.  ii.  172. 

^  See  Raine,  Historians  of  Ch.  of  York,  i.  51. 

*  Eddi,  36.  '  Absentem  diem  lux  agebat  aemula,'  Malmesb.  G.  P.  iii* 
xoi. 


J 


and  released.  339 

wife's  recovery  from  a  death-like  stupor  was  due  to  chap.  x. 
some  holy  water  dropped  by  Wilfrid  into  her  mouth  ^, 
entreated  Egfrid,  with  adjurations,  'not  to  compel  him 
any  longer  to  afflict  the  holy  and  innocent  bishop  to 
his  own  perdition:'  and  the  king  transferred  Wilfrid  to 
Dunbar,  where  the  reeve  Tidlin  was  a  man  of  '  sterner 
stuff  ^/  But  while  the  king  and  queen  were  visiting 
Coldingham,  Ermenburga  fell  ill  one  night,  and  in  the 
morning  seemed  to  be  dying  of  convulsions  '^.  The  abbess 
Ebba*,  remembering  how  Wilfrid  had  officiated  in  her 
church  at  Etheldred's  profession,  took  advantage  of  her 
nephew's  anxiety  to  reprove  him  for  his  injustice.  If 
he  wished  his  wife  to  recover,  he  must  either  restore 
Wilfrid  to  his  bishopric, — which  would  be  best, — or  let 
him  go  whither  he  would.  Egfrid  yielded  to  his  aunt's 
exhortations,  released  Wilfrid,  gave  him  back  his  reliquary, 
allowed  him  to  depart  with  his  friends,  when  they  had 
been  re-assembled :  '  and  the  queen  was  healed.' 

This  is  the  tale  as  told  by  Eddi.  We  know  him  well 
enough  by  this  time  to  be  mistrustful  of  his  details, 
even  when  they  do  not  assume  a  miraculous  form.  If  he 
persuaded  himself,  also,  that  Egfrid  repented  of  what  he 
had  done,  the  facts  hardly  bear  out  such  a  view.  But 
his  difFuseness  is  only  the  exaggeration  of  facts  which 
Bede  astonishes  us  by  all  but  passing  over;  he  ignores 
altogether  this  visit  of  Wilfrid  to  Northumbria,  in  his 
professed  account  of  Wilfrid's  life^;   while  in  the  course 

^  Eddi,  37.  Fridegod,  86i :  'conjunx  .  .  .  Praesidis  infaustas,  ha  !  ha  ! 
procurantis  habenas.' 

^  Eddi  has  another  marvel  to  tell :  Tidlin  caused  iron  chains  to  be 
made  ;  they  were  tried  on  Wilfrid's  hands,  but  proved  to  be  either  too 
tight  or  too  loose,  38. 

3  Eddi,  39 :  '  Contractis  membris  simul  in  unum  stricte  alligatam.' 
Malmesbury  says,  'Coepit  aliena  facere,  insana  dicere.' 

*  She  is  said  to  have  died  August  25,  683  (Alb.  Butler).  The  Chronicle's 
date  of  679  for  the  burning  of  Coldingham  is  too  early  ;  for  it  was  burnt 
after  her  death  (Bede,  iv.  25\  and  this  account  of  Eddi  represents  her 
as  alive  in  681, — let  alone  the  received  date  of  her  death.  Eadmer 
carelessly  calls  her  the  king's  mother,  c.  37,  from  a  mistake  as  to  '  mater ' 
in  Eddi. 

^  Bede,  v.  19  :  *  Post  haec  reversus  Brittaniam,  provinciam  Australium 
Saxonum  .  .  .  convertit.'    *  There  was  but  little  sympathy  between  Wilfrid 

Z    % 


340  Wilfrid  in  Mercia, 

CHAP.  X.  of  his  History  he  just  says  that  '  on  account  of  the 
king's  enmity  he  could  not  be  received  in  his  country 
or  diocese^/  Nor  does  he  say  anything  about  the  next 
event  in  Wilfrid's  story, — his  second  sojourn  in  Mercia, 
which  apparently  began  early  in  68 1.  Berthwald,  the 
nephew  of  King  Ethelred,  an  ealdorman  or  sub-king, 
whom  Eddi  calls  a  prefect,  asked  Wilfrid  to  accept  some 
of  his  own  land  for  the  building  of  a  monastery.  '  Abide 
with  me,  for  the  Lord's  sake ! '  Wilfrid  was  only  too  glad 
to  comply:  a  sojourn  in  Mercia  was  for  him  a  renewal 
of  pleasant  memories,  centering  in  the  kindly  beneficence 
of  Wulfhere^:  he  'thanked  God,  who  had  given  him 
some  solace  of  rest';  and  set  to  work  to  build  'a  little 
monastery,  which  monks  of  his  still  held'  when  Eddi 
wrote  ^.  But  again  his  troubles  returned.  The  old  feud 
had  again  broken  out  between  Mercian  and  Northumbrian 
royalties.  An  invasion  by  Egfrid  had  been  defeated  by 
Ethelred,  in  679,  near  the  Trent;  and  Alfwin,  Egfrid's 
brother,  a  youth  of  eighteen,  apparently  sub-king  of  Deira, 
and  much  loved  in  both  kingdoms,  had  fallen^.  It  was 
exactly  a  year  after  Wilfrid's  expulsion  when  the  corpse 
of  Alfwin  was  brought  into  York  amid  the  wild  wailings 
of  the  people,  who  '  wept  bitterly,  and  tore  their  garments 
and  their  hair^.'  This  victory  of  Ethelred  had  reunited 
Lindsey  to  Mercia  ^ ;  and  Bishop  Eadhed  had  been  fain 

and  the  great  scholar ; '  Raine,  Historians  of  Ch.  of  York,  p.  xxxiv.     See 
above,  p.  319. 

^  Bede,  iv.  13  :  *  in  patria  sive  parochia.'         ^  Eddi,  14.  ^  Eddi,  40. 

*  Bede,  iv.  21.  Malmesbury  says  quaintly,  that  Ethelred  attacked 
Egfrid  in  battle,  'and  admonished  him  to  return  home  ;'  G.  Reg.  i.  77. 
The  scene  of  the  battle  is  said  to  have  been  at  Elford  on  the  Trent,  in 
StaflPbrdshire;  Coxe's  Wendover,  i.  170.  Tighernach  calls  Alfwin 'Almuine.' 
See  above,  p.  267. 

"  Eddi,  24.  He  adds  that  Egfrid  thenceforward  '  usque  ad  mortem  sine 
victoria  regnabat.'  For  the  adventures  of  a  young  noble  named  Imma, 
who  had  been  a  *  gesith '  of  Alfwin,  see  Bede,  iv.  22.  He  vs^as  taken 
prisoner,  but  his  brother  Tunna,  an  abbot,  deeming  him  to  be  dead,  took 
care  to  say  mass  often  for  his  soul.  Bede  was  told  by  some  who  heard 
it, — so  he  tells  us, — from  Imma  himself,  that  his  chains  repeatedly  fell 
off, — most  frequently  (as  he  ascertained  by  subsequent  conversation  with 
Tunna)  at  the  time  when  the  masses  were  said.  The  chapter  indicates, 
moreover,  the  current  belief  in  purgatory  ;  compare  Bede,  v.  12  :  Horn.  49. 

*  '  Integritate  regni  recepta,'  says  Malmesbury  of  the  Mercian  king  ; 


in   PVessex,  and  in  Sussex,  341 

to  flee  into  Deira,  where  he  ^  became  bishop  of  the  church  chap.  x. 
of  Ripon,'  that  is,  if  we  take  the  words  Kterally,  had 
a  diocese  made  for  him  out  of  York,  with  Ripon,  as  at 
present,  for  its  see^.  Peace  had  been  made,  when  a 
protracted  war  seemed  inevitable,  by  the  'salutary  ex- 
hortations of  Theodore,  which  wholly  quenched  the  fire 
of  a  great  peril  ^,'  and  induced  the  Northumbrian  king  to 
be  content  with  a  wer-gild,  or  pecuniary  satisfaction  ^,  for 
his  brother's  blood.  But  one  of  the  fi-uits  of  this  peace* 
was  Wilfrid's  compulsory  removal  from  Mercia :  Ethelred, 
and  his  wife  Osthryd  ^,  Egfrid's  sister,  commanded  Berth- 
wald  to  send  him  away  at  a  day's  notice.  Leaving  his 
monks  behind  him,  and  taking  with  him  several  priests,  as 
Eappa,  Padda,  Burghelm,  and  Oiddi,  together  with  other 
attendants  who  were  in  his  service^,  Wilfrid  travelled 
across  the  border  into  Wessex:  but  soon  the  vindictive 
hatred  of  Ermenburga  dispossessed  him,  for  her  sister, 
being  Kentwin's  wife,  persuaded  the  king  to  banish  him 
from  the  realm  ^.  And  then,  as  Bede  says,  tranquilly 
resuming  his  story,  '  Wilfrid  turned  aside  to  the  province 
of  the  South-Saxons^,'  whose  king  Ethelwalch  gave  him 
a  solemn  assurance  of  protection  ^. 

Gr,  P.  p.  220;  Bede,  iv.  12,  'reoepiKset,'  See  above,  p.  322.  Lindsey  never 
again  became  Northumbrian. 

^  Bede,  iii.  28  :  *  Hrypensis  ecclesiae  praesul  factus  est ; '  more  express 
than  iv.  12,  *  Hiypensi  ecclesiae  praefecit.'  So  Florence,  App,  in  M,  H, 
B.  p.  625.     <  The  possible  see  of  Ripon,'  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  6. 

^  Bede,  iv.  21,     Compare  Gregory  of  Tours,  Hist.  Fr,  ix,  20. 

3  *  Multa.'  See  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  188 ;  Thorpe's  Anc.  Laws, 
p.  79  Glossary,  in  v.  Compare,  on  the  principle  of  such  compensation, 
or  'satisfactio,'  Tacitus,  Germ.  ar.  See  Gibbon,  iv.  367  ;  and  Robertson, 
Scotl.  under  Early  Kings,  ii.  286.  He  refers  to  this  intervention  of 
Theodore,  and  gives  various  scales  of  'wer-gilds,'  English  and  foreign. 
See  also  Kemble,  i.  270  :  and  above,  p.  273. 

*  It  lasted  apparently  until  Ethelbald  of  Mercia  invaded  Northumbria 
in  737. 

^  See  Bede,  iii.  11;  iv.  21.  She  was  murdered,  long  afterwards,  by 
Mercian  nobles  ;  Bede,  v.  24  ;  Chronicle,  a.  697. 

*  Bede,  iv.  13.  The  Chronicler  erroneously  says  that  *  Eoppa '  {sic)  was 
sent  by  Wilfrid  and  Wulfhere  to  preach  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  in  66r. 

^  Eddi,  40. 

■^  Bede,  iv.  13  :  '  Siquidem  divertens  ad  provinciam,'  &c. 
^  Eddi,  41  :  'That  none  of  his  enemies  should  terrify  him  by  the  threat 
of  the  sword,  nor  make  void  the  promise  by  greatness  of  gifts.' 


342  The  South-Saxons  isolated 

CHAP.  X.        And  now  we  come  to  the  most  beautiful  chapter  in  his 
Wilfrid      ijfg  ^^X  which  furnishes  the  best  example  of  the  remark, 

theapostle    ,  ,  .        ,  ,  . 

of  Sussex,  that  his  character  was  ever  noblest  m  adversity  ^, — the 
strongest  title  which  it  can  show  to  the  aureole  of  pure 
saintship. 

That  little  South-Saxon  realm,  traditionally  one  of  the 
oldest  of  the  kingdoms,  was  by  far  the  most  insignificant. 
It  is  simply  omitted  in  Florence  of  Worcester's  dynastic 
tables,  as  if,  after  the  great  things  which  Ella  and  his 
three  sons  had  done  from  their  landing  at  Kynor  in  477  ^ 
to  the  destruction  of  Anderidu  in  491,  a  spell  had  stiff- 
ened the  South-Saxons  into  the  utter  negation  of  all 
stirring  national  life.  Fenced  in  by  the  huge  dim  forest 
of  the  Andred-weald,  which  extended  its  arms  into  Kent 
and  Hampshire  ^,  and  into  which  the  first  Saxon  invaders 
drove  '  some  of  the  Welsh  ^/  or  by  Romney  Marsh  east- 
ward, the  people  seemed  to  be  inaccessible  to  the  influences 
which  were  swaying  their  neighbours  hither  and  thither, 
and,  in  particular,  were  unconscious  of  the  great  spiritual 
movement  which  had  formed  Kent  and  Wessex  into 
districts  of  Christendom.  Twenty  years  before,  their  king 
Ethelwalch,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  had  become  a  Christian 
and  married  the  Hwiccian  Eaba,  increased  his  dominion 
by  receiving  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  a  strip  of  Hampshire 
called  Meon,  as  a  grant  from  his  godfather  Wulfhere'*^. 
He  seems  to  have  invited  into  his  realm  some  six  Irish 
monks,  Dicul  being  their  abbot  ^,  who  built  themselves 
a  very  small  monastery  at  Bosham  '^,  near  '  Cissa's-caster,' 
the  Saxon  town,  called  after  one  of  Ella's  sons,  on  the 

^  Raine,  i.  61.  But  Churton  is  not  warranted  in  suggesting  that  his 
'  prosperity  had  gone  near  to  quench '  his  '  zeal  for  the  cause  of  God ' ; 
E.  E.  Ch.  p.  91. 

^  Cymenes-ora  (Chronicle,  a.  477)  is  Kynor  on  Bracklesham  Bay,  near 
Wittering. 

^  See  Green,  Mak.  of  Engl.  pp.  11,  88.     Above,  p.  211. 

*  Chronicle,  a,  477.  °  See  above,  p.  210. 

^  Bede,  iv.  13.  See  Murray's  Handbook  for  Kent  and  Sussex,  p.  339; 
and  Stephens's  Memorials  of  See  of  Chichester,  p.  7.  But  Dicul's  little 
monastery  was  not  '  one  of  the  waifs  and  strays  of  the  early  British  Church.' 
We  meet  with  a  Dicul,  an  Irish  priest,  in  Bede,  iii.  19. 

^  See  Freeman,  iii.  222,  for  Godwin  and  Harold  as  dwelling  there. 


and  still  Pagan,  343 

site  of  the  Roman  Regnum.  They  dwelt  there,  unregarded  chap.  x. 
by  the  heathens  around  them,  holding  their '  little  Christian 
fortress/  but  gaining  no  ground  whatever.  '  Not  one  of 
the  country  people  cared  to  imitate  their  humble  and  poor 
life '  of  devout  service,  '  nor  so  much  as  to  listen  to  their 
preaching^.'  It  seemed  a  hopeless  case;  Irish  zeal  had 
done  wonderful  things  in  other  mission-fields,  on  the  Con- 
tinent ^  and  in  Britain; — it  fell  flat  and  dead  on  the  as 
yet  unimpressible  barbarians  of  Sussex.  Dicul  and  his 
brethren  had  to  live  on  amid  the  woods,  bearing  the 
burden  of  apparent  failure,  and  keeping  up  by  their 
presence  and  their  devotions  what  seemed  a  fruitless 
testimony  for  God.  Theirs  was  the  position  assigned  in 
various  ages  to  faithful  labourers^,  who  have  worked 
and  waited,  not  really  in  vain,  just  before  the  time 
appointed  for  other  men's  success.  This  was  the  condition 
of  Sussex,  'wholly  ignorant  of  the  name  of  God,  and  of 
the  faith,'  when  Wilfrid  found  refuge  within  its  frontier 
in  681. 

With  what  thoughts  must  he  have  entered  its  wood- 
lands, or  looked  forth  on  the  sea  from  its  coast !  Fifteen 
years  before,  he  had  narrowly  escaped  with  his  life,  and 
the  lives  of  nearly  all  his  companions,  from  the  ferocity 
of  Sussex  'wreckers,'  urged  on  by  their  Pagan  priest*. 
He  now  came  once  more  among  the  people,  shielded  from 
actual  peril  by  their  king's  patronage,  but  otherwise 
devoid  of  adventitious  claims  on  their  respect.  Some  of 
them  may  have  heard  that  he  was   an  exile,  under  the 


^  Bede,  iv.  13  :  *  Sed  provincialium  nuUus,*  &c. 

^  See  Haddan's  Remains,  p.  268  ;  Goldwin  Smith,  Irish  Hist.  p.  27. 
Bishop  Forbes  says  that  'all  the  west  of  Europe,  from  Iceland  to  Tarentum, 
felt  the  power'  of  the  Irish  Church  ;  Kalendars,  p.  341.  See  above,  p. 
109,  for  Columban,  the  typical  Irish  missionary  to  the  Continent ;  cp. 
the  phrase  '  pro  Domino  peregrinam  ducere  vitam '  used  of  Fursey  in 
iii.  19. 

=*  Palladius  in  Ireland  ;  Livin,  an  Irish  missionary  who,  after  meeting 
with  great  opposition,  was  martyred  in  Belgium  in  656  (Lanigan,  ii. 
468) ;  Wictbert,  who  preached  in  Frisia  for  two  years,  and  '  found  no  fruit 
of  all  his  labour,'  Bede,  v.  9 ;  Hans  Egede  in  Greenland  ;  Henry  Martyn. 
Cp.  Lightfoot,  Hist.  Essays,  p.  87. 

*  Above,  p.  243. 


\ 

1 


344         Wilfrid'' s  help  hi  temporal  needs 

ban  of  his  own  king  and  Witan.  If  he  was  to  do  them 
any  good,  to  bring  any  light  into  their  darkness,  he  must 
do  so  by  his  own  missionary  capacities :  and  we  have  seen 
how  he  put  off  the  prosecution  of  his  appeal  in  order  to 
be  a  missionary  among  the  Frisians.  As  Bede  well  says, 
although  he  was  shut  out  from  his  own  diocese, '  he  could 
not  be  restrained  from  the  ministry  of  evangelizing  ^.'  He 
began  in  a  fashion  which  may  be  called  Pauline :  he  seized 
a  temporal  emergency  as  a  spiritual  opportunity.  A  long 
drought  had  produced  sore  famine:  so  great  was  the 
despair  produced  by  exhaustion,  that  men  would  go  by 
forties  and  fifties  to  some  cliff  or  beach,  and  with  joined 
hands  leap  or  rush  into  the  sea^.  The  people  were  so 
truly  barbaric  that  they  were  ignorant  of  fishing  except 
for  eels,  although  the  sea  and  rivers  abounded  with  fish. 
Wilfrid's  versatility  was  equal  to  the  occasion.  He  had 
always,  it  seems,  taken  interest  in  handicrafts :  he  bade 
his  attendants  collect  nets  used  in  eel-fishing,  and  cast 
them  into  the  sea  ^ :  presently  they  hauled  in  three  hundred 
fish  of  different  sorts,  which  they  divided  into  three  parts, 
— for  the  poor,  for  the  lenders  of  the  nets,  and  for  them- 
selves. '  By  which  good  service,'  writes  Bede,  '  the  prelate 
turned  their  hearts  powerfully  to  love  him, — and  they 
were  the  readier  to  listen  hopefully  to  his  preaching  about 
heavenly  benefits,  after  they  had  through  his  agency 
received  temporal  good*.'  'The  hour'  was  indeed  'come, 
and  the  man.'  '  The  dull  hard  stone '  of  their  hearts  was 
melted :  they  gathered  round  the  stranger  who  had  lifted 
them  out  of  their  physical  misery,  and  gratitude  and  con- 
fidence towards  Wilfrid  became  faith — however  rudimen- 
tary— in  his  Lord.     He  spent  some  months  in  a  regular 

^  Bede,  iv.  13  :  '  Non  tamen  ab  evangelizandi  potuit  ministcrio  cohiberi.* 
In  this  part  of  Wilfrid's  life,  Bede  far  exceeds  Eddi  in  vividness  and 
fullness. 

^  This  Bede  tells  as  a  report, — *■  ferunt.* 

'  St.  Gall,  on  the  lake  of  Constance,  was  wont  'squamigero  gregi 
insidias  componere '  :  see  the  legend  about  the  water-spirit  who  tried  to 
damage  his  nets,  Vit.  S.  Galli  ;  Pertz,  Mon.  Germ.  Hist.  ii.  7. 

*  Quo  beneficio  multum  antistes  cor  omnium  in  suum  convertit  amorem,* 
&c.  Bede,  iv.  13.  *  To  supply  bodily  needs  TroAXa/cts  et?  ^vxw  ^^V^^j  5t* 
(vvoias  8ov\ovfi€vov,'  St.  Greg.  Naz.  Orat.  43,  c.  34,  on  St.  Basil. 


i 


results  in  South-Saxon  conversion.       345 

course  of  instruction  ^ ;  and  with  such  effect  that  ealdormen 
and  thanes  set  the  example  of  receiving  baptism  from 
his  hand,  and  his  four  priests,  then  or  afterwards,  baptized 
the  rest  of  the  people.  No  doubt,  as  in  other  multitudin- 
ous conversions,  there  were  some  which  were  conversions 
only  in  name  :  and  if  we  can  rely  on  Eddi,  the  delight 
with  which  the  king  surveyed  the  good  work  led  him 
to  use  direct  pressure  on  those  who  would  otherwise  have 
held  aloof  2.  On  the  day  of  the  great  general  baptism, 
we  are  told  that  the  long-delayed  rain  'fell  gently  and 
copiously,  the  parched  earth  began  to  recover  its  freshness 
and  verdure,  the  year  came  round  again  glad  and  fruit- 
ful ^.'  '  And  so,  having  cast  off  their  old  superstition  and 
renounced  their  idolatry  *,  the  heart  and  the  flesh  of  the 
people  rejoiced  in  turning  to  the  living  God,  understanding 
that  He  who  is  the  true  God  had  enriched  them  by  His 
heavenly  grace  with  both  inward  and  outward  blessings  ^.' 
Thus,  at  last,  the  dew  came  upon  that  'fleece'  which 
had  been  dry  in  the  midst  of  the  watered  ground.  It 
came  with  the  beginnings  of  civilization^,  to  accompany 

^  Above,  p.  137.    Cp.  Bede,  ii.  14  ;  iii.  7 ;  iv.  26  ;  v.  6. 

2  Eddi,  41  :  'Alii  vero  coacti  regis  imperio.'  Contrast  Ethelbert,  above, 
p.  58. 

3  Bede  becomes  poetical  :  *  Rediit  viridantibus  arvis  annus  laetus  et 
frugifer.'     Alcuin  imitates  him  in  de  Pont.  Eccl.  Ebor.  595. 

*  •  Exsufflata  ; '  alluding  to  the  old  custom  of  spitting  as  if  in  abhorrence 
of  the  Evil  One,  at  the  time  of  renouncing  him  and  his  works.  See 
Bingham,  b.  xi.  c.  7.  s.  5  ;  Palmer,  Orig.  Lit.  ii.  177.  In  the  Eastern 
Church  this  custom  still  continues  ;  in  the  office  for  making  a  catechumen 
we  find,  'Hast  thou  renounced  Satan?'  'I  have  renounced  him.' 
'  Breathe  out,  then  (kfJicpvarjGov),  and  spit  at  him.'  Goar,  Euchologion, 
p.  358.  In  Bede,  v.  6,  is  a  reference  to  the  similar  custom  of  breathing 
on  the  catechumen's  face  at  the  first  exorcism  :  '  Exsufflante  illo  in  faciem 
meam,'  So  the  Gelasian  Sacramentary,  p.  113,  ed.  Wilson  :  'Exsufflas  in 
faciem  ejus'  (of  a  convert  from  paganism). 

*  Bede,  iv.  12  :  '  Sicque  abjecta,*  &c.  Cp.  Ps.  Ixxxiv.  a.  Alcuin,  de 
Pont.  Eccl.  Ebor.  601,  refers  to  the  same  text,  and  adds, 

'  Certius  aeternis  inhiantes  pectore  don  is. 
Quo  sumpsere  prius  sibimet  terrena  per  ilium.' 
'  See  Raine,  i.  70.  Meinhard  won  over  some  Lieflanders  by  teaching 
them  to  build  a  fortress  for  defence  of  their  trade  ;  Maclear,  Conv.  of 
Slavs,  p.  158.  John  Eliot  'found  it  absolutely  necessary  to  do  what  he 
called  carrying  on  civility  with  religion ' ;  Miss  Yonge,  Pioneers  and 
Founders,  p.  16.    J.  Price  *  wisely  qualified  himself  to  act  as  a  physician  ' 


346  Wilfrid  settled  at  Selsey 

CHAP.  X.  and  recommend  it :  some  '  promise  of  the  life  that  now 
is/  some  initiation  into  the  arts  which  improve  its  con- 
dition, assisted  the  announcement  of  'that  which  was  to 
come.'  Wilfrid  was  now  'the  Apostle  of  the  South- 
Saxons  ' :  and  he  became  their  first  resident  bishop.  Ethel- 
walch  made  over  to  him  a  royal  ^vill/  his  own  place  of 
abode  ^,  and  added  to  it  a  domain  of  eighty-seven  hydes 
consisting  of  Selsey,  'the  Isle  of  the  Sea-calf,'  as  Bede 
calls  the  seal :  it  was,  in  fact,  a  peninsula  joined  on  the 
west  to  the  mainland  by  a  strip  of  ground  about  a  sling's 
throw  across  ^.  Here  the  bishop  was  to  establish  a  home 
for  himself  and  his  fellow-exiles,  and  a  centre  for  mission- 
ary and  episcopal  work.  The  minster  arose — doubtless, 
amid  many  pensive  recollections  of  Ripon  and  Hexham — 
on  a  spot  which  has  since  then  been  submerged  by  the 
encroachments  of  the  Channel,  and  is  supposed  to  have 
been  about  a  mile  eastward  of  the  present  church^.  He 
began  his  episcopate  with  a  characteristic  act  of  Christian 
kindness.  The  king  had  given  him  two  hundred  and 
fifty  persons,  living  on  the  estate,  'as  bondsmen  and 
bondswomen :  he  saved  them  all,  by  baptizing  them,  from 
slavery  to  the  devil,  and  by  granting  them  their  liberty, 
set  them  free  from  the  yoke  of  slavery  to  man*.'  He 
set  his  faithful  priest  Eappa  over  the  monastery;  and 
Bede  tells  us  how  the  pestilence  made  its  way  into  the 
Selsey  peninsula  ^  and  carried  away  many  of  Wilfrid's 
attendants,  and  also  of  his  new  converts;   one  of  these 

before  going  to  Rangoon  ;  ib.  142.  Comp.  Memoir  of  Bp.  Steere,  pp. 
154,  168. 

^  Eddi,  41.     Compare  Ethelbert  at  Oanterbury ;  above,  p.  60. 

^  See  Bede,  iv.  13  :  'Quo  tempore,*  &c.  'Such  a  place  is  called,  by  the 
Latins,  a  peninsula ;  by  the  Greeks,  a  cherronesos.'  See  Stephens's 
Memorials  of  See  of  Chichester,  p.  15. 

2  In  Camden's  time  it  was  visible  at  low  water ;  Britann.  i.  199.  See 
Murray's  Kent  and  Sussex,  p.  327. 

*  Bede,  iv.  13:  'Et  quoniam  illi  rex,'  &c.  Kemble,  Sax.  Engl.  i.  211. 
On  such  manumission  of  slaves,  see  Lecky,  Europ.  Morals,  ii.  74,  and 
above,  p.  42.  Cp.  Council  of  Celchyth  (^Chalk  ?)  in  816,  c.  10  ;  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  iii.  583. 

*  It  largely  infected  communities,  as  at  Lastingham,  Bede,  iii.  23  ; 
Lichfield,  ib.  iv.  3  ;  Barking,  ib.  iv.  7,  8  ;  Ely,  ib.  iv.  19  ;  Wearmouth, 
Hist.  Abb.  8 ;  Liudisfame  and  Carlisle,  Vit.  Cuthb.  27. 


as  South-Saxon  Bishop.  347 

being  a  boy  who,  on  the   5th   of   August,  had  a  dream    chap.  x. 

which  shortly    preceded    his    death,   and   in   consequence 

of  which  that  day  was  thenceforward  observed  by  masses 

in  memory  of  King  Oswald  in  this  Northumbrian  colony 

at  Selsey, — no   other  member   of  which,  beside   the   boy, 

was  at  that  time  'hurried  out  of  the  world,' — 'and  also 

in  many  other  places  ^.' 

And  here  let  us  leave  Wilfrid  among  his  South-Saxons. 
The  strange  restraint  which  had  checked  Bede's  hand  in 
that  part  of  his  narrative  which  should  have  described 
Wilfrid's  sufferings  is  removed  when  he  has  to  write,  not 
of  the  magnificent  prelate  who  seemed  rather  the  first  than 
the  second  man  in  Northumbria,  but  of  the  exile  who  knew 
so  well  how  to  make  his  own  misfortunes  '  turn  out  for  the 
furtherance  of  the  Gospel.'  '  For  five  years  he  exercised  in 
those  parts  the  office  of  the  episcopate,  both  by  words  and 
by  deeds,  deservedly  honoured  by  all  ^ ; '  with  the  little 
cathedral  of  Selsey  instead  of  York,  with  the  poor  simple 
neophytes  of  Sussex  instead  of  the  Northumbrian  Church 
in  its  stately  organization,  with  Ethel walch  and  Ebba — 
a  happy  exchange — instead  of  Egfrid   and  Ermenburga ; 

^  Bede,  iv.  14.  This  'puerulus,'  an  inmate  of  the  monastery,  and  a  boy 
of  great  simplicity,  gentleness,  piety,  was  taken  ill  of  the  plague,  and  was 
lying  in  bed  alone,  at  7  a.  m.  on  the  second  of  three  days  which  had  been 
appointed  for  a  '  triduanum  jejunium,'  when  he  seemed  to  see  '  the  blessed 
chiefs  of  the  apostles,'  Peter  and  Paul,  who,  as  Bede  heard  the  story,  told 
him  that  he  would  die  in  grace  on  that  very  day,  but  *  had  to  wait '  until 
mass  (missae)  had  been  celebrated,  that  he  might  receive  the  viaticum : 
and  that  all  the  other  patients  would  recover.  This  had  been  granted  to 
the  prayers  of  the  king  Oswald,  beloved  of  God,  who,  in  dying,  prayed  for 
all  his  nation,  and  therefore  for  them.  The  boy  described  the  two  ap- 
pearances as  having  faces  'most  pleasant  and  fair';  Peter  was  shorn  like 
a  cleric,  Paul  had  a  long  beard.  Eappa,  on  hearing  the  tale,  consulted  his 
'  annalis  codex,'  or  calendar,  ascertained  that  it  was  the  anniversary  of 
Maserfield  (p.  175),  and  gave  orders  that  masses  should  be  celebrated  Mn 
all  the  oratories  of  the  monastery,'  that  then  all  the  brethren  should 
communicate  at  a  mass  in  the  church,  and  that  *  a  particle  of  the  oblation ' 
should  be  carried  to  the  sick  lad,  who  soon  afterwards  expired.  It  is  easy 
to  see  how  the  story  grew  out  of  a  dream  and  a  coincidence.  As  it  speaks 
of  the  '  viaticum  dominici  corporis  et  sanguinis,'  it  would  seem  that  here 
(if  not  in  Caedmon's  case)  the  *  particle'  was  first  steeped  in  the  chalice; 
see  Book  of  Deer,  p.  90,  '  Corpus  cum  sanguine  ...  sit  tibi/  &c. 

^  Bede,  iv.  13  :  '  Nam  ipse  illis  in  partibus,'  &c. 


348 


Wilfrid  in  Sussex, 


his  troubles  settling  down  into  the  quietness  of  an 
*  apostleship/  which  might  for  a  while  seclude  the  man 
whose  name  had  been  heard  through  Europe,  but  which, 
in  the  general  estimate  of  his  life,  may  be  tinily  said  to 
constitute  its  crown. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

I  r  has  been  natural  to  treat  the  first  series  of  Wilfrid's 
troubles  as  one  subject,  and  to  pursue  it  without  interrup- 
tion ;  it  is  time  now  to  look  at  the  progress  of  the  Church 
in  various  kingdoms  since  the  division  of  his  diocese 
in  678. 

We  meet,  in  the  first  instance,  with  a  statement  by 
Florence  of  Worcester  ^,  which  assigns  to  679  a  fivefold 
partition  of  the  Mercian  diocese,  the  effect  of  which  was  to 
establish  Bosel  as  bishop  of  Worcester,  Cuthwin  of  Lich- 
field, Saxulf  of  Leicester,  Ethelwin  of  '  Siddenacester,'  and 
^tla  of  Dorchester.  This,  it  is  said,  was  done  by  Theodore 
at  the  request  of  Ethelred,  who  was  himself  prompted  by 
Oshere,  '  king '  of  the  Hwiccas.  But  the  statement  requires 
'analysis  and  criticism 2. '  Let  us  see  what  can  be  made 
good.     As  to  Worcester,  Bede  tells  us^  that  several  years 

^  In  the  appendix  to  his  Chronicle  :  '■  Cui  Hwicciorum,'  &c.  Oshere, 
the  alleged  promoter  of  the  partition,  is  referred  to  in  a  charter  of  734-737 
as  having  induced  Ethelred  to  give  lands  to  two  nuns  ;  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  98. 
If  Florence  is  correct,  Osric  must  be  dated  after  Oshere,  for  Osric  was  in 
office  about  690  ;  Bede,  iv.  23.  On  the  other  hand,  the  evidence  pre- 
ponderates in  favour  of  assigning  the  earlier  date  to  Osric  (see  above, 
p.  297),  and  placing  the  accession  of  Oshere  shortly  before  693,  when  he 
granted  land  at  '  Penitanham  '  to  abbess  Cutswid  ;  Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i. 
41.  Bp.  Stubbs  supposes  him  to  have  been  succeeded  by  his  tliree  sons, 
as  'comites,'  about  704:  Cath.  of  Wore.  p.  5. 

^  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  128.  Florence,  says  Sir  T.  D.  Hardy,  'is 
very  good  original  authority  as  far  as  the  see  of  Worcester  is  concerned  ; ' 
Mon.  H.  Brit.  p.  122.     Still,  the  date  of  his  death  is  11 18. 

^  Bede,  iv.  23  :  *  De  medio  nunc  dicamus.'  He  implies,  by  'paulo  ante' 
further  on,  that  Bosel  had  not  a  long  episcopate.  Florence  dates  its 
termination  (when,  as  Bede  says,  he  resigned  on  account  of  illness)  in  691. 
Probably,  while  bishop,  he  lived  with  monks  around  him,  even  if  his 
cathedral  ' family'  was  not  composed  entirely  of  monks ;  Stubbs,  Cath.  of 
Wore.  p.  7.  His  church  was  called  St.  Peter's  ;  Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  35  ; 
Green,  Hist.  Wore.  p.  16. 


350  Mercian  Diocese  divided. 

HAP.  XI.  after  this,  when  Osrie  was  '  king,'  or  sub-king,  of  the 
Hwiccian  district,  of  which  Worcester  was  the  capital, 
Bosel  was  the  bishop  of  that  province,  having  been  ap- 
pointed when  Tatfrid,  once  a  monk  of  Whitby,  had  been 
elected,  and  then  had  died  before  he  could  receive  consecra- 
tion^,— a  circumstance  which  appears  in  the  narrative  of 
Florence.  This  enables  us  to  believe  that  the  bishopric  of 
Worcester — a  city  which  had  a  British  name  as  Cair 
Guilagor  ^,  and  which,  says  Florence,  '  exceeded  many  other 
cities  in  the  height  and  stateliness  of  its  walls' — may  be 
traced  back  to  a  time  somewhat  near  679.  Leicester  was 
also  made  a  bishopric  for  the  Mid- Angles;  but  Cuthwin^, 
not  Saxulf,  was  its  first  prelate,  as  Florence  himself  inti- 
mates in  his  catalogue  of  bishops  :  Saxulf  retained  his  seat 
at  Lichfield.  We  have  heard  how  Eadhed  was  sent  from 
Northumbria  to  preside  over  Lindsey:  when  Lindsey 
became  again  Mercian,  Ethelwin,  who  had  spent  some 
time  in  Ireland  as  a  student  of  theology  *,  was  established 
as  bishop  of  Sidnacester,  commonly  identified  with  Stow, 
a  village  between  Gainsborough  and  Lincoln  ^.  Florence 
does  not  mention  Hereford:  Putta  had  probably  settled 
there,  and  his  presence,  as  that  of  a  bishop  who  had  been 

*  Bede,  iv.  23. 

^  Nennius,  p.  62.  Also  written  'Guoeirangon.'  Ethelred's  charter  of 
691-2  speaks  of  ^  Weogorna* ;  Ethelbald's  charter  of  716  of  'Uigranceastre' ; 
another  of  his,  of  '  Wigorna' ;  bishop  Milred's,  in  774,  of  '  Weogernacesti*e ' 
(Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  35,  80,  108,  152)  ;  the  Chronicle  of  992,  of 
*  Wigernaceastre.'  'The  chieftain  of  "  Hwiccas"  had  as  much  authority 
in  his  good  city  of  Worcester  as  the  king  of  Essex  in  London ; '  Palgrave. 
Angl.-Sax.  p.  46.     The  Mercian  capital  was  Tarn  worth. 

^  'Virum  religiosum  ac  modestum/  Flor.  There  was  no  regular 
succession  at  Leicester  until  737  ;  Stubbs,  Registr.  162. 

*  Bede,  iii.  27:  'Erant  inter  hos,' &c.  Ethelwin  was  of  noble  'Anglian' 
blood,  and  had  come  home  from  Ireland  *  bene  instructus ' ;  his  brother 
Ethelhun  had  died  there  of  the  pestilence.  Ethelwin  ruled  the  church  of 
Lindsey  *  multo  tempore  nobilissime,'  and  was  succeeded  by  Edgar  ; 
Bede,  iv.  12. 

^  *  Stow,  the  ancient  Sidnacester;'  Freeman,  ii.  49.  See  Camden, 
Britan.  i.  572 :  he  observes  that  Eadnoth  II,  bishop  of  Dorchester, 
Leicester,  and  Sidnacester,  in  the  eleventh  century,  built  Hhe  church  of 
Our  Lady  in  Stow  ' ;  and  that  it  was  commonly  believed  *  in  those  parts 
that  Stow  was  the  mother  church  to  Lincoln.'  See,  however,  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  iii.  129,  547.  On  Stow  church  as  *  curious  and  interest- 
ing,' cp.  Parker,  Goth.  Arch.  p.  25. 


J/Fas  Oxfordshire  then  Mercian?        351 

obliged  to  quit  Rochester,  would  prepare  for  the  erection  of  chap.  xi. 
a  regular  bishopric.  The  chief  difficulty  is  about  Dor- 
chester. Florence  evidently  got  his  account  of  ^tla  from 
a  brief  statement  of  Bede  \  that  ^tla,  a  monk  of  Whitby, 
became  bishop  of  Dorchester, — to  which  statement  he  added 
one  of  his  own,  that  Dorchester  was  treated  in  679  as  a 
Mercian  bishopric  for  '  South  Anglia  2.'  Now,  in  no  other 
passage  does  Bede  tell  us  of  a  see  of  Dorchester,  distinct 
from  that  of  Winchester,  while  Heddi  presided  over  the 
latter  church;  and,  beside  this,  we  do  not  know  that  the 
district  ecclesiastically  dependent  on  Dorchester  was  then 
in  any  sense  Mercian  ^,  if  it  ever  did  become  so  before  the 
battle  of  Bensington  in  777  *.  It  has  been  suggested  that 
the  statement  of  Florence  is  incorrect,  and  that  Bede's  is  to 
be  explained  by  identifying  ^tla  with  Heddi  ^.  Against 
this  latter  suggestion  it  is  to  be  urged  that  Bede  could  not 
have  confounded  one  of  the  scholarly  disciples  of  Hilda 
with  a  prelate  whom  he  repeatedly  names  Heddi,  and 
expressly  describes  as  not  learned  ^.  On  the  whole  it  seems 
not  unlikely  that,  in  the  weakened  and  distracted  condition 
of  Wessex,  Ethelred  might  have  repeated  the  policy  of 
Wulfhere  by  invading  Wessex  on  the  north,  annexing 
Oxfordshire  for  the  time  to  Mercia,  and  installing  JEtla  in 
the  church  of  St.  Birinus"^.  Very  likely  Florence  erred 
in  assigning  all  these  arrangements  to  one  time,  and  to 
Oshere   what   was   rather   due   to    a    predecessor   in   the 

^  Bede,  iv.  23  :  *  De  secundo  (^tla)  breviter  intimandum,'  &c. 

^  Kemble,  i.  80.  The  term  '  South-Anglian '  had,  however,  a  wider 
application.  Thus  in  Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  96,  100  :  '  Ethelbald,  king  not 
only  of  the  Mercians,  but  of  all  the  provinces  which  are  called  by  the 
general  name  of  South- Angles  ; '  where  the  lands  referred  to  are  in 
Staffordshire,  Warwickshire,  Gloucestershire  ;  Pearson,  Hist.  Maps,  p.  40. 

"^  It  was  certainly  West-Saxon  under  Kynegils  in  635.  See  above,  p.  170. 
Wulfhere's  invasion  of  Wessex  might  be  merely  a  raid. 

*  When  Offa  defeated  Kynewulf ;  Chronicle,  a.  777.  See  Freeman,  Old- 
Engl.  Hist.  p.  82  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  130 ;  Green,  Making  of  Engl, 
p.  419. 

5  Mabillon,  Ann.  Bened.  i.  595,  distinguishes  them. 

*  Bede,  iii.  7  ;  iv.  12  ;  v.  18. 

'  Dorchester  reappears  as  a  Mercian  bishopric  in  869  :  so  that  the  see 
of  Lincoln,  as  transferred  from  Dorchester  by  Remigius,  is  thus  akin 
rather  to  Lichfield  than  to  Winchester. 


352        Saxon  Monastery  at  Glastonbury, 


Saxon 
monks 
settled  at 
Glasston- 
l.nry. 


Hwiccian  sub-kingship^,  Osric,  the  nephew  of  Ethelred, 
and  apparently  the  son  of  Alchfrid  of  Northumbria.  But 
it  is  probable  that  Theodore,  encouraged  by  his  success  in 
Northumbria,  would  be  eager  to  carry  out  his  scheme  in  the 
Midlands.  It  was  contemporaneously  Avitli  these  movements 
of  Church  extension  in  Mercia  that  the  monastery  of  St.  Peter 
at  Gloucester  ^,  apparently,  like  Whitby,  a  community  in- 
cluding monks  and  nuns,  was  founded,  or  completed,  under 
the  patronage  of  Ethelred,  and  by  the  munificence  of  Osric, 
the  sub-king. 

A  more  illustrious  place  than  any  of  those  now  mentioned, 
in  a  purely  ecclesiastical  sense,  received  a  new  endowment 
which  formed  an  era  in  its  history.  From  658,  when  Ken- 
walch  drove  the  Britons  beyond  the  Parret  ^,  their  oldest 
sanctuary,  '  the  isle  of  Avalon,'  had  come  into  Saxon  hands. 
'  The  one  famous  holy  place  of  the  conquered  Briton  which 
had  lived  through  the  storm  of  English  conquest^/ — with 
its  '  Old  Church '  originally  of  woven  rods,  then  covered 
with  wood  and  lead  '',  was  inevitably  abandoned  by  the  one 

^  See  above,  p.  297. 

2  See  Monast.  Angl.  i.  531  ;  Hist.  Men.  Glouc.  i.  pp.  xiii.  Ixxii.  3  ff.  (ed. 
Hart)  ;  where  the  date  in  the  so-called  charter  of  Ethelred,  671,  is  corrected 
to  681.  Osric  is  said  to  have  been  Ethelred's  nephew,  although  in  this 
charter  he  and  his  brother  Oswald,  the  reputed  founder  of  the  monastery 
of  Pershore,  are  described  only  as  '  ministri  of  noble  race '  ;  a  description 
fatal  to  the  genuineness  of  the  charter.  He  is  also  usually  identified  with 
the  Osric  who  reigned  over  Northumbria  from  718  to  729,  for  whom  see 
Bede,  v.  23.  Now,  this  king  Osric,  according  to  Simeon  of  Durham  (Dun. 
Eccl.  i.  13),  was  son  of  Aldfrid  the  Wise,  the  successor  of  Egfrid  ;  but,  as 
bishop  Stubbs  thinks,  he  may  rather  have  been  the  son  of  Alchfrid  their 
brother,  '  the  Disinherited,'  who  might  have  placed  his  children  under 
the  protection  of  his  brother-in-law  Ethelred  ;  see  above,  p.  193.  The 
first  abbess  of  Gloucester,  according  to  the  local  documents,  was  Kyniburga, 
the  sister  of  Osric,  apparently  named  after  her  mother,  Alchfrid's  wife, 
afterwards  abbess  of  Caistor.  She  was  consecrated,  we  are  told,  by  bishop 
Bosel,  and  died  in  710.  Dean  Spence's  discovery  of  Osric's  remains  in 
Gloucester  cathedral,  is  described  in  Good  Words  for  1892,  p.  388  ff. 

'  Above,  p.  210. 

*  Freeman,  i.  436 ;  cp.  his  Engl.  Towns  and  Districts,  p.  82  ff. 

^  Malmesb.  de  Antiq.  Glaston.  Eccl.  and  Gest.  Reg.  i.  20.  The  English 
learned  to  call  it  '  Ealdcyrc ' :  'St.  Joseph's  chapel '  afterwards  rose  on  its 
site,  west  of  the  great  church.  Compare  the  *  virgae '  used  for  making 
a  '  hospitium  *  in  Hy,  Adamn.  Vit.  Col.  ii.  3,  and  Reeves's  note,  that  Irish 
churches  were  sometimes  so  constructed,  e.  g.  one  at  Glendalough.  See 
above,  p.  11. 


Saxon  Monastery  at  Glastonbury,       353 

race,  and  reverentially  occupied  by  the  other.  Saxon  eccle-  chap.  xi. 
siastics  walked  at  will  over  the  time -hallowed  ground, 
ascended  the  '  Tor  of  the  Archangel '  on  the  east,  looked 
northward  towards  the  Mendips,  southward  towards  the 
fen  called  Allermoor^,  and  all  around  on  similar  marshes 
with  fair  green  islands  rising  out  of  them,  as  Bekerey  or 
Little  Ireland,  and  meadowy  Ferramere,  and  Andredesey 
'  more  beautiful  than  all  the  rest  ^.'  A  Saxon  community 
of  monks  took  possession  of  '  the  wooden  basilica '  of  the 
Virgin,  consecrated  by  the  memory  of  so  many  real  and 
legendary  saints  ^ :  the  Ynys-vitryn  of  Celtic  speech,  after- 
wards called  Aval  on,  settled  down  into  its  Saxon  name  of 
Glastonbury  ^ :  and  Bishop  Heddi,  on  July  6,  680,  granted 
lands  in  the  district,  at  Lantocal  and  in  the  isle  of  Ferra- 
mere, to  Hemgils  the  abbot  ^,  by  a  deed  which  in  its 
business-like  brevity  puts  to  shame  not  a  few  pompous 
pseudo-charters,  while  its  solemn  opening  formula  has 
a  special  emphasis  as  contrasting  the  '  change '  of  '  the  old 
order'  with  the  changeless  'reign  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ^.' 
We  must  also  apparently  assign  to  this  period  the  founda- 
tion of  a  West-Saxon  monastery  within  the  limits  of  the 
British  kingdom  of  Dumnonia  at  Exeter"^,  the  ancient  Caer 

^  See  the  plan  in  Monast.  Angl.  vol.  i,  before  p.  i. 

^  Monast.  Angl.  i.  22.  Yet  Malmesbury  (Gest.  Pont.  ii.  91)  describes 
*  Glastonia '  as  'in  quodam  recessu  palustri  posita  ....  nee  situ  nee 
amoenitate  delectabilis.' 

^  Cp.  Malnie^b.  Gest.  Keg.  i.  20. 

*  Malmesbury's  account  is,  that  one  Glasting  from  North  Wales  followed 
his  lost  sow  until  he  found  her  under  an  apple-tree,  near  the  old  church 
in  '  Yniswytrin,'  whence  he  called  the  isle  Avallon  (Apples'  Isle), — unless 
it  was  so  called  from  one  Avalloc  who  dwelt  there  for  seclusion  ;  Gale,  i.  295. 
Glastonbury  is  in  fact  'the  burgh  of  the  Glaestings,'  a  Saxon  patronymic  ; 
Freeman,  i.  573.     See  'Glestingaburg'  in  Bonif.  Ep.  70.     Above,  p.  11. 

^  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  164 ;  Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl,  i.  24  ;  Churton, 
E.  E.  Church,  p.  113.  Afterwards  a  charter  was  forged  ascribing  the 
grant  of  Ferramere,  together  with  '  two  small  islands,*  to  Kenwalch  in 
670 ;  <5od.  Dipl.  i.  10. 

*  *  Regnante  et  gubernante  nos  D.  n.  J.  C.  .  .  .  Nihil  intulimus  in  hunc 
mundum,*  &c.  These  are  common  formulas  :  as  to  the  latter,  cp.  charters 
of  Ethelbald,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  107,  122.     For  the  former,  see  p.  277. 

'  I.e.  if 'Adestancastre' in  Willibald's  Life  of  St.  Boniface,  or  'Adescan- 
castre '  in  Othlon's,  is  equivalent  to  'at  Eaxancester'  or  Exeter,  as  is  usually 
said  :  see  Pertz,  Mon.  Germ.  Hist.  ii.  355.    Cp.  Mabillon,  Act.  SS.  Ben.  iii.  2, 

A  a 


354  Mission  of  John  the  Precentor, 

CHAP.  XI.  Wise.  For  we  find  that  about  seven  years  after  680,  this 
house,  then  ruled  by  an  abbot  named  Wulfard,  opened  its 
doors  to  receive  a  boy  from  the  neighbouring  Crediton, 
whose  name  of  Winfrid  was  to  be  lost  in  the  glory  of 
'  St.  Boniface,  Apostle  of  Germany  and  martyr.' 

To  return  to  Northumbrian  affairs.  The  fifth  Romeward 
journey  of  Benedict  Biscop — the  fourth,  as  Bede  prefers  to 
reckon  it,  taken  directly  from  Britain ' — was  probably 
made  five  years  after  the  foundation  of  Wearmouth,  and 
in  the  year  of  Wilfrid's  arrival  at  Rome.  He  was  accom- 
panied by  '  his  fellow-worker '  Ceolfrid,  who  wished,  as 
Bede  expresses  it, '  to  learn  what  was  needful '  as  to  Roman 
rules  of  discipline  ^,  and  to  offer  up  his  prayers  in  Roman 
sanctuaries  ^ :  and  Agatho  received  the  pilgrim-abbot  with 
all  honour,  and  granted  him  a  letter  of  '  privilege '  for 
Wearmouth  *.  Another  boon  was  craved  by  Benedict, 
which  in  its  results  affected  the  whole  Church  of  Eng- 
land. Would  the  Pope  send  back  with  him  the  abbot  of 
St.  Martin's  ^,  who  was  also  '  arch-chanter '  or  precentor  of 
St.  Peter's,  that  he  might  teach  the  Wearmouth  monks 
'  the  system  of  chanting  and  reading '  established  in  the 
Apostle^s  basilica^?     Benedict's  whole  heart  was  absorbed 

p.  6  ;  Alb.  Butler,  June  5  ;  Maclear,  Ap.  Med.  Eur.  p.  no.  On  the  early 
history  of  Exeter,  fee  Freeman's  'Exeter,'  p.  5  flf.  Winfrid  was  born  about 
680,  for  he  Was  about  seventy-five  when  martyred  in  755.  Tradition 
names  Crediton  as  his  birthplace  ;  Camden,  Britan.  i.  39.  Freeman 
suggests  that  West-Saxons  may  have  advanced  into  this  part  of  Dumnonia 
through  Dorset,  while  North  Devon  was  still  British.  Wlien  the  boy 
prevailed  on  his  father  to  let  him  enter  a  monastery,  he  was,  according 
to  Mabillon  (Ann.  Ord.  Ben.  ii.  15'',  about  seven  years  old. 

^  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  5  ;  see  too  iv.  18.     Cp.  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  126. 

2  in  Anon.  H.  Abb.  'desiring  to  learn  the  duty  of  his  degree  more  fully 
at  Rome  than  he  could  in  Britain.'     Cp.  Diet.  Chr,  B.  i.  439, 

^  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  6.  '  Adorandi '  seems  to  have  the  sense  of  '  visiting 
with  religious  reverence'  ;  cp.  ib.  2,  14. 

*  Bede,  iv.  18 :  *  In  munimentum  libertatis  monasterii,  .  .  .  juxta  quod 
Ecgfridum,'  &c.  ;  Hist.  Abb.  5,  12.     See  above,  p.  113. 

'  *  On  the  Mount,'  i.  e.  the  Esquiline  :  it  was  founded  by  pope 
Symmachus  in  honour  of  SS.  Sylvester  and  Martin. 

^  *  For  a  thousand  years,'  says  DSllinger,  *  after  the  fall  of  the  Western 
empire,  Rome  possessed  no  school  of  importance,  nor  any  seat  of  learning 
whose  influence  was  widely  spread.  A  famous  twinging  school  existed, 
and  that  was  all.'     Studies  in  Europ.  Hist.,  E.  T.,  i.  70. 


Mission  of  John  the  Precentor,  355 

in  the  welfare  of  his  new  foundation ;  but  Agatho  saw  that  chap.  xi. 
a  much  wider  purpose  might  be  served  by  compliance  with 
this  rather  bold  request.  It  was,  no  doubt,  a  good  thing  to 
establish  the  Roman  '  course '  in  a  North- English  monas- 
tery ;  but  it  was  more  important  to  secure  the  English 
Church,  even  by  superabundant  precautions,  against  the 
heresy  of  the  Monothelites,  which,  after  long  troubling  the 
East,  was  soon,  as  he  hoped,  to  receive  its  death-blow  at 
Constantinople  ^.  Now,  if  John  the  Precentor  were  to  go 
to  Britain,  he  might  carry  a  copy  of  the  decrees  of  Pope 
Martin's  Lateran  synod,  and  communicate  them  formally 
to  the  English  bishops,  so  as  to  be  able  to  report  on  their 
theological  position,  and  thus  promote  the  triumph  of 
orthodoxy  2.  So  it  was  that,  in  68a,  Benedict  and  Ceolfrid 
escorted  John  to  Gaul,  and  halted  at  Tours,  where  the 
monks  of  St.  Martins  own  church  received  them  with 
kindly  hospitality,  entreated  the  abbot  of  the  Roman 
'  St.  Martin's '  to  visit  them  on  his  return-journey,  and 
furnished  him  with  '  assistants  for  the  work  '  which  he  had 
undertaken.  It  is  easy  to  picture  the  joyous  welcome  with 
which  the  party  were  received  at  Wearmouth  ;  the  solemn 
reading  of  the  'privilege '  which,  as  the  brethren  would  be 
reminded,  had  been  granted  by  the  Pope  at  the  express 
desire  of  King  Egfrid :  the  delight  with  which  the  un- 
travelled  monks  would  turn  over  a  goodly  store  of  books 
of  all  kinds,  brought  from  Rome  to  enrich  their  library  ^, 
and,  still  more,  the  fair  paintings  which  were  to  beautify 
their  church, — here,  those  of  the  Virgin  Mother  and  the 

^  See  Constantine  Pogonatus'  overtures  to  pope  Bonus  I  (676-678),  and 
pope  Agatho  ;  Hefele,  v.  137  ff.,  E.  T. 

^  Bede,  iv.  18  :  '  Unde  volens  Agatho,*  &c.  If  Agatho  had  hoped,  up 
to  Easter  of  680,  to  see  Theodore  in  Rome  (see  above,  p.  335),  he  would 
hardly  have  made  these  arrangements  at  an  earlier  date. 

^  One  of  the  books  was  a  'pandecta'  or  complete  Bible  *  of  the  old 
translation  (i.  e.  prior  to  the  Vulgate) ' ;  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  12.  Ceolfrid  after- 
wards caused  three  'pandectae'  of  the  Vulgate  to  be  made  (perhaps  by 
copyists  brought  from  Italy).  Two  of  these,  according  to  his  anonymous 
biographer  (whose  work  Bede  used),  he  left  in  his  two  monasteries  ;  the 
third,  which  he  took  with  him  on  his  last  Homeward  journey,  intending 
to  present  it  to  Gregory  II,  has  been  identified  with  the  great  Codex 
Amiatinus  at  Florence  ;  cf.  Studia  Biblica,  ii.  273  ff.  Cp.  Alcuin,  Ep.  13, 
to  the  monks  of  Wearmouth  and  Jarrow  :  *  Videte  libroinim  thesauros.' 

k  S^  % 


\ 


356  Council  of  Hatfield. 

CHAP.  XI.  Apostles,  which  were  to  be  fixed  to  a  board  running  across 
from  wall  to  wall, — there,  scenes  from  Gospel  history  to  be 
hung  along  the  southern  wall  of  the  minster,  and  there, 
again,  representations  of  Apocalyptic  visions  to  confront 
them  on  the  north  ^.  '  So  that,'  as  Bede  says,  in  a  passage 
truly  'Gregorian'  in  tone,  'all  who  came  into  the  church, 
however  ignorant  of  letters,  might  be  able,  whichever  way 
they  looked,  to  contemplate,  albeit  only  in  painting,  the 
ever-lovable  countenances  of  Christ  and  His  saints,  or 
to  dwell  with  quickened  intelligence  on  the  grace  of  His 
Incarnation,  or  by  having  as  if  before  their  eyes  the  trial 
of  the  Last  Judgement,  might  remember  to  be  stricter  in 
examining  themselves  ^.'  The  monks,  too,  would  highly 
value  the  privilege  of  learning  the  orthodox  mode  of  chant- 
ing and  reading,  under  their  own  roof,  from  the  most 
eminent  of  all  choir-masters  ^  who,  beside  his  oral  lessons, 
took  the  pains  to  write  out  for  them  the  whole  Roman 
scheme  of  yearly  festivals,  which  was  long  preserved  at 
Wearmouth,  and  copied  out  for  neighbouring  monasteries 
from  time  to  time  *.  Nor  did  the  kindly  Roman  limit  his 
good  offices  to  Benedict's  monks :  from  '  almost  all '  the 
religious  houses  in  Northumbria  those  who  had  studied 
chanting, — probably  the  elder  of  them  under  James  the 
Chanter,  the  younger  under  Eddi  Stephen,— came  to  listen 
to  John,  and  many  besought  him  to  come  and  give  lessons 
in  different  places  in  the  neighbourhood  ^.      He  also  per- 

^  Bede,  I.e.:'  Quintum,  picturas  imaginum  sanctarum,'  &c.  See  Lingard, 
A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  107  ;  Green,  Making  of  Engl.  p.  373.     Above,  p.  52. 

^  Bede,  1.  c.  ;  '  Quatenus  intrantes  ecclesiam,'  &c.  Observe  Bede's  ever- 
recurring  thought  of  the  Last  Judgement.  See  Bede,  iv.  24  ;  v.  12,  13,  14; 
Vit.  Cuthb.  14  ;  Ep.  to  Egb.  i  ;  and  the  account  of  his  last  hours. 

^  The  monk  who  wrote  the  Anonymous  History  of  the  Abbots  records 
this  gratefully  :  '  Qui  nos  abundanter  ordinem  cantandi  per  ordinem  et 
viva  voce  simul  et  litteris  edocuit.'  See  Bed.  Horn.  25.  Probably  the 
youngest  of  all  those  who  heard  John  chant  in  the  choir  of  Wearmouth 
was  Bede  himself.  The  most  accomplished  chanter  among  the  clergy  of 
Rome  in  those  days,  next  to  John,  was  the  Syrian  Sergius,  who  became 
pope  seven  years  later,  and,  as  pope,  introduced  into  the  mass  the  singing 
of  the  '  Agnus  Dei.'     Lib.  Pontif.  ed.  Duchesne,  i.  376. 

*  Bede,  iv.  18  :  *  Ordinem  .  .  .  ritumque  canendi  et  legendi,'  &c.  See 
Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  197,  on  the  Roman  course  of  services  as  observed  at 
Wearmouth  and  Jarrow.     Cp.  Duchesne,  Origines,  p.  437. 

^  John  the  Deacon  says  (Vit.  Greg.  ii.  7,  8)  that  the  Germans  or  Gauls, 


Council  of  Hatfield,  357 

mitted   the   copyist  of   the   monastery  of   Wearmouth  to   chap.  si. 
transcribe    the    Lateran   Council's  decrees,  before  he  was 
called  away,  in  the  autumn,  to  attend  the  second  provincial 
synod  of  the  English  Church  ^. 

This  assembler  was  called  by  Theodore  in  order  to  certify 
the  Pope  as  to  the  orthodoxy  of  the  Church  under  his  rule  ^, 
and  so  to  add  to  the  testimony  of  the  Western  Churches, 
now  to  be  brought  to  bear  on  the  East,  It  was  hardly 
likely  that  the  modification  of  Monophysitism  which  had 
so  long  disturbed  the  East  should  have  found  supporters  in 
distant  Britain  ^ :  but  Agatho  wished  to  make  assurance 
doubly  sure.  The  place  of  the  Council  was  Heathfield  or 
Hatfield'',  which  may  perhaps  be  identified  with  Cliff- at-Hoe, 
the  'Cloveshoch^  selected  in  673.  The  day  was  the  17th 
of  September,  in  a  year  described  by  the  record  of  the 
Council  as  the  tenth  of  Egfrid,  the  sixth  of  Ethelred,  the 
seventeenth  of  Aldwulf  of  East-Anglia,  the  seventh  of 
Lothere  of  Kent,  and  the  eighth  indiction  ^.  There  is 
a  slight  error  in  these  regnal  reckonings,  for  the  September 
of  680  was  in  Lothere' s  eighth  year  and  Egfrid 's  eleventh  ^. 
The  other  dates  point  to  Sept.  17,  680.  Precise  as  the 
record  is  on  other  points,  it  omits  the  names  of  the  bishops 
who  attended;  but  beside  them,  as  at  Hertford,  other 
Heachers'   appear  to  have  been  present,  although  not  as 

partly  from  *  levity  of  mind,'  partly  from  natural  roughness  of  voice,  could 
not  retain  Hhe  sweetness  of  the  Gregorian  melody,'  and  that  to  remedy 
this  defect,  John  the  Roman  chanter  vs^as  sent  by  Vitalian  through  Gaul 
into  Britain,  '  qui  circumquaque  positarum  ecclesiarimi  filios  ad  pristinam 
cantilenae  dulcedinem  revocans,  tam  per  se  quam  per  suos  discipulos 
multis  annis  Romanae  doctrinae  regulam  conservavit.' 

^  Bede,  iv.  i8  :  '  Nam  et  synodum  ...  in  praefato  .  .  .  monasterio  trans- 
scribendam  commodavit.' 

2  Bede,  1.  c.  :  '  Unde  volens  Agatho,'  &c. 

2  It  had,  indeed,  been  brought  into  Gaul,  and  promptly  condemned, 
forty  years  before  ;  Hefele,  Councils,  v.  69,  E.  T.  ;  Mansi,  x.  759. 

*  For  this  council,  see  Bede,  iv.  17  ;  Mansi,  xi.  175  ;  Wilkins,  i,  51  ; 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  141.  Collier  calls  it  '  the  council  at  Hatfield  or 
Clyff  near  Rochester,'  i.  249.     Above,  p.  280. 

^  See  L'Art  de  Verifier,  i.  142  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  144  ;  above, 
p.  48. 

^  The  latter  came  to  the  throne  in  February,  670 ;  the  former  in 
July,  673. 


35^  Council  of  Hatfield. 

HAP.  XI.  constituent  members  of  the  synod  ^  According  to  the 
symbolic  precedent  of  other  and  grander  Councils^,  the 
book  of  the  Gospels  was  displayed,  apparently  on  a  raised 
seat  or  desk,  in  the  centre  of  the  assembly.  John  the 
Precentor  attended  as  commissary  from  the  Pope,  and  pro- 
duced the  Lateran  dogmatic  decrees,  which  were  read. 
They  began  by  a  statement  of  the  Incarnation,  adopted 
from  the  Chalcedonian  exposition  of  faith,  but  enlarged 
by  an  assertion  of  '  two  natural  wills '  and  '  two  natural 
energies '  or  activities  ^,  Divine  and  human,  existing  har- 
moniously in  the  one  Christ,  who,  being  both  God  and  Man, 
must  have  spheres  of  will  and  action  corresponding  to  His 
two  Natures,  without  prejudice  to  the  indivisible  unity 
of  His  Person*.  Then  followed  sixteen  anathematisms 
whereby  Pope  Martin  had  endeavoured  to  guard  this  faith 
in  detaiP:  and  four  others  explicitly  enforcing  the  theology 
of   the  Five  Oecumenical  Councils  which  had  then  been 

*  Toled.  IV.  c.  4.  See  Smith's  Bede,  p.  744  :  'Non  ideo  .  .  .  ut  sua 
auctoritate  decreta  vel  facerent  vel  firmarent,'  &c. 

^  As  the  council  of  Ephesus  (Cyril,  Apolog.),  and  that  of  Chalcedon 
(Mansi,  vi.  580).    Also  Martin  I's  Lateran  council ;  Mansi,  x.  866. 

^  The  controversy  arose  out  of  an  attempt  by  Sergius,  patriarch  of  Con- 
stantinople, to  reconcile  the  Monophysites  to  the  Church  by  the  formula 
of  'one  evepyeia'  or  kind  of  action,  in  the  God-Man  (Hefele,  v.  5  ff.,  E.  T.). 
This  began  somewhat  before  a.  n.  619.     See  above,  p.  253, 

*  It  was  urged  that  will  is  the  property  of  a  person.  It  is  rather  the 
property  of  a  nature,  but  exercised  by  a  person  on  that  nature.  Herein 
consists  the  original  mystery  of  the  Incarnation,  that  the  one  Divine  Son 
of  God  could,  as  incarnate,  live  in  two  spheres  of  being — that  what  we 
call  manhood  could  exist  in  the  Christ  without  the  basis  of  a  human 
personality.     Cp.  Liddon,  Bamp.  Lect.  p.  262. 

'  E.  g.  Nestorianism  was  excluded  by  a  repeated  description  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin  as  '  Dei  genitrix,'  and  by  the  assertion  that  God  the  Word, 
one  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  had  come  down  from  heaven  and  been  incarnate. 
The  Cyrilline  phrase,  '  One  (pvais  incarnate  of  God  the  Word,'  though  it 
might  seem  prima  facie  to  favour  Monophysitism,  was  adopted  with  an 
explanation  which  did  not,  however,  bring  out  its  true  '  Cyrilline  '  sense, 
as  equivalent,  in  effect,  to  *  One  Person,'  &c.  The  two  wills  were  aflfirmed, 
because  Christ  willed  in  both  His  natures  to  save  us  ;  and  similarly  the 
two  'activities.'  Martin  meant  to  say,  'If  He  did  not,  in  His  human 
sphere  of  being,  really  desire  to  work  out  our  salvation,  and  really  give 
Himself  up  for  that  purpose,  — if  such  willing  and  acting  took  place 
merely  in  the  sphere  of  His  Godhead, — then  He  is  not  our  Saviour  as  God 
and  Man.'  He  also  guards  the  sense  of  'theandric  activity':  it  must  be 
acknowledged  to  be  'twofold,'  not  single  :  see  Robertson,  H.  Ch.  ii.  423. 


Council  of  Hatfield.  359 

holden,  and  condemning  by  name  twenty-six  '  heretics,'  chap.  xr. 
among  whom  Origen  was  included  \  but  the  authors  of  the 
Monothelite  theory,  Theodore  of  Pharan,  Cyrus  of  Alexan- 
dria, Sergius^  and  Pyrrhus  and  Paul  of  Constantinople,  • 
together  with  the  '  impious '  Ecthesis  of  Heraclius  and  the 
'  wicked '  Type  of  Constans  ^  were  branded  with  specially 
emphatic  condemnation.  The  record  of  the  Council  of 
Hatfield  tells  us  that  its  members,  firmly  adhering  to  the 
teaching  delivered  by  Christ  to  His  original  disciples,  to 
'  the  Creed  of  the  holy  (Nicene)  fathers,' to  'all  the  holy  and 
universal  synods,'  and  to  '  the  whole  choir  of  approved 
doctors  of  the  Catholic  Church,'  confessed  the  Holy  Trinity, 
that  is,  '  the  One  God  in  three  consubstantial  Subsistences  * 
or  Persons,  of  equal  glory  and  honour '  (words  taken  from 
the  Lateran  document  ^) ;  and  after  some  similar  affirma- 
tions omitted  by  Bede,  the  statement  of  faith  went  on  to 
acknowledge  the  Five  Councils,  and  the  Lateran  Council 
held  '  in  the  time  of  the  blessed  Pope  Martin  ^.'     '  And  we 

^  He  had  been  anathematized  in  a  council  at  Constantinople  (in  543  ?). 
See  Robertson,  ii.  298  ;  Hefele,  b.  ,13.  s.  257. 

^  Pope  Honorius'  letters  to  him  were  passed  over. 

^  The  '  Ecthesis'  was  promulgated,  at  the  urgency  ofSergius,  who  him- 
self composed  it,  in  the  latter  part  of  638  :  it  acknowledges  the  two 
natures  in  the  one  Person  of  Christ  ;  but  it  condemns  the  phrase  '  two 
activities,'  as  if  inconsistent  with  the  truth  that  the  Energizer  was  One, 
and  as  appearing  to  many  to  imply  two  wills  acting  against. each  other  :  and 
on  this  account  it  affirms  '  one  will.'  It  also  prohibits  the  phrase  '  one 
activity,'  as  appearing  to  some  to  deny  '  the  two  natures  personally  united 
in  Christ  our  God.'  The  '  Type  '  was  promulgated  ten  years  later,  in  648, 
by  the  advice  of  the  Monothelite  patriarch  Paul.  It  endeavoured  to 
quench  the  whole  controversy,  without  reflecting  on  the  orthodoxy  of 
either  side  :  it  proscribed,  for  peace'  sake,  the  phrases  '  two  wills,'  *  one 
will,'  *  two  activities,'  '  one  activity,'  and  all  explanations  of  received 
language  in  the  sense  of  any  of  these  formulas.  *  This  supposed  impar- 
tiality,' says  Hefele,  v.  97,  '  is  the  principal  difference  between  the 
Typus  and  the  Ecthesis.'  See  them  in  Mansi,  x.  992,  i;<)29.  Next  year, 
Martin  held  his  synod.  His  sufferings,  and  those  of  Maximus,  which, 
like  his,  amounted  to  martyrdom,  followed  in  653-662. 

*  '  Subsistentiis,' for  the  Greek  vnoffTaffeai,  'vel  personis.'  The  Roman 
council  of  680  also  used  subsistentia  for  hypostasis  or  person ;  Mansi, 
xi.  290. 

5  See  it  in  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  146  :  '  Omnes  sanctae  .  .  .  synodi, 
et  omnis  probabilium  catholicae  ecclesiae  doctorum  chorus.'  'Tribua 
subsistentiis,'  &c. 

^  It  is  added,  *  imperante  Constantino  piissimo.'     So  in  the  Lateran 


360       Question  of  the  Double  Procession. 

oHAP.  XI.  glorify  our  Lord  Jesus  even  as  they  glorified  Him,  neither 
adding  nor  taking  away  anything.  And  we  anathematize, 
with  heart  and  mouth,  those  whom  they  anathematized, 
and  receive  those  whom  they  received ;  glorifying  God  the 
Father  without  an  origin  ^,  and  His  only-begotten  Son, 
begotten  of  the  Father  before  the  ages,  and  the  Holy  Spirit 
proceeding  ineffably  from  the  Father  and  the  Son^;  even 
as  the  above-mentioned  holy  apostles,  prophets,  and  doctors 
have  proclaimed.  And  we  all  subscribe,  who  with  Theodore 
the  archbishop  have  expounded  the  Catholic  faith.' 

These  words  suggest  an  important  question.  Theodore 
and  his  brethren  here  include  in  their  *  exposition '  a  plain 
assertion  of  the  Double  Procession  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  To 
refer  the  words, '  and  the  Son,'  to  the  mission  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  as  Paraclete,  would  be  to  ignore  the  phrase  '  ineff- 
ably "V  which  clearly  points  to  an  eternal  relation  within 
the  life  of  the  Godhead.  Now,  the  Council  of  a  hundred 
and  twenty-five  bishops,  held  by  Agatho  in  the  spring  of 
this  same  year,  had  omitted  all  reference  to  the  Double 
Procession  in  its  solemn  exposition  of  the  '  limits '  of  the 
Catholic  Faith*.  How  came  the  English  Council  to  act 
differently?  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  adoption  of 
*  et  Filio,'  by  a  '  philosophical '  archbishop  of  Eastern  birth 
and  Eastern  Church  training,  tends  to  show  that  the 
Eastern  Church  of  his  time  was  not  averse  to  this  addition 
to  that '  Constantinopolitan  '  recension  of  the  Creed,  which 
had   been   solemnly   accepted,   together   with   its  original 


synod,- Coilstans  is  called  Cori-.tantine.  Bury  'suspects'  that  this  was 
really  his  name  ;  ii  285. 

^  *  Sine  initio  : '  alluding  to  the  distinction  of  the  Father  as  the  Unbe- 
gotten,  as  *a  nullo.'  In  the  formulas  of  the  third,  sixth,  and  eleventh 
councils  of  Toledo,  the  phrase  is  applied  to  the  Son,  meaning  *  without 
beginning,'  '  existing  from  eternity,'  as  in  Rufinus  in  Symb.  6.  See 
Treatises  of  St.  Athanasius,  Lib.  Fcith.,  ii.  513,  on  apx'?. 

^  *  Procedentem  ex  Patre  et  Filio  inenarrabiliter.' 

^  On  this  confessed  inadequacy  of  human  language  to  the  full  expression 
of  Divine  truth,  compare  S.  Aug.  de  Trin.  v.  s.  10;  vii.  s.  7,  9,  11  ;  and 
eleventh  council  of  Toled.,  praef.  :  '  Pater  .  .  .  qui  de  ineflfabili  substantia 
Filium  ineflfiibiliter  genuit;'  Mansi,  xi.  133.  Compare  'the  ineffable 
iinion,'  in  seventh  anath.  of  the  fifth  general  council,  Mansi,  ix.  381. 

*  Mansi,  xi.  290. 


Qtiestwn  of  the  Double  Procession.       361 

Nicene  form,  by  the  Council  of  Chalcedon.  But  a  much  chap.  xi. 
more  probable  explanation  lies  ready  at  hand^.  Abbot 
Hadrian  was,  as  we  have  seen,  sent  to  Britain  with 
Theodore  in  the  capacity  of  his  theological  adviser ;  and 
he,  as  an  African,  would  have  a  natural  predilection  for 
the  theological  language  of  St.  Augustine,  which  contains 
explicit  assertions  to  the  same  effect  ^ ;  and  would  desire 
the  English  Council  to  follow  the  precedent  of  Spanish 
Councils,  as  the  great  Council  called  the  third  of  Toledo 
in  589  ^,  the  fourth  in  633  ^,  the  sixth  in  638  ^,  the  eighth 
in  653  ^,  the  eleventh  in  675  ^ — a  precedent  largely  due  to 
the  ignorance  of  Spanish  prelates  as  to  the  true  text  of  the 
Creed,  and  to  the  '  firm  footing  ^ '  already  obtained  in  that 
Church  for  what  was  originally  a  gloss  intended  to  strike 
at  Visigothic  Arianism  by  emphasizing  the  doctrine  of 
a  coequal  and  consubstantial  Son. 

So  ended  the  Council  of  Hatfield,  without  any  reference 
to  the  case  of  the  great  prelate  who  a  few  months  before 
had  answered  at  Rome  for  the  orthodoxy  of  the  English 
bishops,  and  who  in  this  very  autumn  was  experiencing  in 
Northumbria  the  full  bitterness  of  an  aggravated  wrong. 


^  Swete,  Doctrine  of  the  Procession,  p.  190,  As  he  observes,  it  does  not 
follow  that  the  council  received  the  '  interpolation  '  as  part  of  the  creed. 

^  S.  Aug.  de  Trin.  xv.  s.  29  :  '  Ideo  enim  addidi '  ^as  to  the  Spirit's  pro- 
ceeding from  the  Father)  ^ prindpaliter,  quia  et  de  Filio  Spiritus  Sanctus 
procedere  reperitur  .  .  .  Sic  ergo  eum  genuit,  ut  etiam  de  illo  Bonum  com- 
mune procederet,  et  Spiritus  Sanctus  Spiritus  esset  amborum.'  Compare 
ib.  XV.  s.  47  ;  and  ib.  iv.  s.  29,  '■  Nee  possumus  dicere  quod  Spiritus 
Sanctus  et  a  Filio  non  procedat,  neque  enim  frustra  idem  Spiritus  et 
Patris  et  Filii  Spiritus  dicitur.'  This  is  in  a  passage  in  which  the  Father 
is  owned  to  be  the  '  principium '  of  the  Godhead.  So  ib.  v.  s.  15  :  '  Patrem 
et  Filium  principium  esse  Spiritus  Sancti.'  So,  a  century  later,  Ferrandus 
of  Carthage,  Ep.  4  ;Galland.  Bibl.  xi,  355),  '  Catholici  .  .  .  de  Patre  et 
Filio  Spiritum  Sanctum  procedere  sentiunt ;  *  and  Ep.  7,  *  Proprium 
Spiritus  Sancti  de  utroque  procedere.'     Cp.  Greg.  Tur.  H.  E.  Fr.  prol. 

^  Mansi,  ix.  978,  '  et  a  Filio,'  in  the  '  tome ';  ib.  982,  in  the  text  of  the 
creed ;  ib.  985,  'et  Filio,'  in  the  3rd  canon. 

*  Ib.  X.  615,  'et  Filio  ;'  in  a  dogmatic  statement. 

'  Ib.  X.  662,  '  Filioque  ;  *  in  a  dogmatic  statement. 
^  Ib.  X.  1210,  'et  Filio  ;'  in  the  text  of  the  creed. 

'  Ib.  xi.  133,  *  ab  utrisque,'ina  dogmatic  statement;  but  a  later  sentence 
appears  to  explain  ' processisse  '  by  'missus.' 

*  Swete,  p.  170. 


362  Death  of  John  the  Precentor, 

CHAP.  XI.  At  Hatfield,  every  one  seems  to  have  ignored  his  name, 
though  no  one  can  have  forgotten  it^.  The  Roman  Pre- 
centor must  have  heard  of  the  story ;  one  would  think  that 
he  must  have  been  at  Rome  when  judgement  was  given  on 
the  appeal.  But  it  did  not  lie  in  his  commission  to  enter 
on  such  matters ;  and  if  any  suffragan  bishop  had  been 
minded  to  pronounce  the  name  of  Wilfrid,  he  would  have 
been  summarily  put  down  by  the  autocratic  president. 
Shortly  after  the  Council,  John  set  forth  on  his  return, 
duly  provided  with  an  authenticated  copy  of  the  proceed- 
ings ^.  But  he  never  again  saw  his  abbey  of  St.  Martin ; 
he  never  again  'ruled  the  choir'  above  the  grave  of  the 
chief  Apostle.  He  fell  sick  in  Gaul,  and  died ;  and  his 
promise  to  the  good  monks  of  Tours  that  he  would  stay 
with  them  on  his  homeward  journey  was  fulfilled  in 
strangely  mournful  fashion  by  their  solemn  reception  and 
interment  of  his  corpse  \  The  document  in  his  charge  was 
forwarded  to  Rome,  and  gave  much  content  to  the  Pope 
and  '  to  all  who  heard  it  read,'  as  a  proof  of  '  the  Catholic 
belief  of  the  English  people*.'  Agatho  was  at  this  time 
engaged  in  watching,  by  correspondence,  the  proceedings 
of  the  great  Council,  reckoned  as  the  Sixth  Oecumenical '', 
which  had  assembled  under  the  personal  presidency  of  the 
Emperor  on  the  7th  of  November,  and  continued  its  sessions 
until  the  September  of  681. 
Death  of  During  those  November  days  a  life  was  ebbing  out, 
which  had  for  years  represented  in  Norfchumbria  the  unity 
of  the  Church  of  Egfrid  and  Wilfrid  with  the  Church  of 
Edwin  and  Paulinus.  A  long  and  weary  illness  had  broken 
down  the  strength  of  the  great  abbess  of  Whitby;  yet  she 

^  The  Peterborough  forger,  whose  account  of  the  proceedings  occurs  in 
the  Chronicle  for  675,  makes  the  Witan  assemble  at  Hatfield  to  receive 
from  Wilfrid  a  '■  privilege '  sent  by  Agatho  in  favour  of  the  abbey  of 
Medeshamstede,  whereupon  king  Ethelred  ratifies  and  enlarges  all  former 
grants,  and  the  act  is  attested  by  Theodore,  and  by  Wilfrid,  '  archbishop 
of  York.' 

-^  Bede,  iv.  18  :  *  Datumque  illi  exemplar.' 

^  Bede,  I.e.  :  *  Verum  ille  patriam  revertens,'  &c. 

*  Bede,  1.  c.  :  '  Exemplum  eatholicae  fidei  Anglorum  .  .  .  gratantissime 
exceptum." 

^  See  Mansi,  xi.  207. 


Death  of  Hilda,  363 

persisted  in  doing  what  work  she  could  ^  until,  in  the  chap.  xr. 
seventh  year  of  her  infirmity,  in  the  night  of  the  17th  of 
November,  680,  'when  her  pain  had  struck  inward/  as 
Bede  expresses  it,  she  felt  that  her  hour  was  at  last  come. 
It  was  'about  the  cock-crowing'  when  she  sent  for  'the 
viaticum  of  the  most  Holy  Communion,'  received  it  with 
the  'handmaids  of  Christ'  belonging  to  the  monastery, 
uttered  her  last  admonitions  to  '  live  in  evangelical  peace 
with  each  other,  and  indeed  with  all,  and  while  uttering 
them  looked  cheerfully  on  death,  or  rather,  if  I  may  use 
the  Lord's  words,  passed  from  death  unto  life^.'  Bede 
then  describes  a  'beautiful  harmony  of  events,  whereby, 
while  some  were  beholding  her  departure  from  this  life  ^ 
others  were  being  made  cognizant  of  her  entrance  into  the 
perpetual  life  of  souls.'  Thirteen  miles  from  Whitby,  and 
three  miles  to  the  west  of  Scarborougli,  lies  Hackness, 
where  in  that  very  year  Hilda  had  founded  a  dependent 
house,  under  the  government  of  Frigyd.  Among  its  in- 
mates was  Begu"*,  a  nun  of  more  than  thirty  years' 
standing,  who  in  her  dream  that  night  saw  Hilda's  soul 
'guided  by  angels  to  the  threshold  of  eternal  light,'  and 
thereupon  aroused  the  prioress,  who  assembled  the  other 
nuns  in  the  church,  and  bade  them  '  say  prayers  and 
psalms^  for  the  soul  of  the  Mother.'  In  the  morning 
arrived  some  monks  from  Whitby  to  announce  the  great 
bereavement.  'We  know  it  already,'  said  the  inmates  of 
Hackness :  and  they  then,  on  inquiry,  ascertained  that  the 
hour  of  Begu's  dream  had  been  the  hour  of  Hilda's  death  ^. 

^  Bede,  iv.  23  :  'In  quo  toto  tempore  nunquam  .  .  .  gregem  .  .  .  docere 
praetermittebat,'  &c.     He  quotes  2  Cor.  xii.  9. 

"^  lb.  '  Septimo  ergo,'  &c.   See  John  v.  24.  Cp.  Bede,  iv.  28,  Hist.  Abb.  11. 
^  lb.  '  Pulchraque  rerum  concordia,'  &c. 

*  There  is  no  ground  for  identifying  this  Yorkshire  nun  with  the  Bega 
who  came  from  Ireland,  and  founded  a  religious  house  on  the  coast  of 
Cumberland,  and  whose  name  clings  to  the  noble  church,  the  little 
adjacent  town,  and  the  *  towering  headlands '  of  St.  Bees,  It  is  yet  more 
futile  to  see  in  Begu  the  Heiu  who  preceded  Hilda  at  Hartlepool. 

*  Compare  Bede,  iii.  2,  on  the  psalms  said  at  Heavenfield  for  the  soul  of 
St.  Oswald  ;  cp.  v.  14.  Above,  p.  301.  It  appears  from  Bede's  story  that 
the  passing-bell  was  usually  tolled  immediately  after  a  death :  cp.  Lingard, 
A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  48. 

®  Bede  adds  that  at  Whitby  one  of  the  younger  sisters,  who  loved  the 


364  Bishopric  at  Abercorn. 

CHAP.  XI.  Hilda  was  succeeded  in  the  abbacy  by  the  princess-nun 
Elfled,  who  had  been  given  into  her  charge  as  a  mere 
infant  before  the  foundation  of  Whitby,  and  just  after  the 
victory  of  Winwidfield^. 

We  do  not  find  in  the  account  of  the  synod  of  Hatfield 
any  mention  of  the  subject  which  was  adjourned  from  that 
of  Hertford,  but  had  been  to  a  considerable  extent  pre- 
sented during  the  interval  in  the  form  of  an  accomplished 
fact.  In  the  year  after  the  Council,  however,  a  fresh 
opportunity  for  diocesan  subdivision  presented  itself  to 
Theodore.  Eata  gave  up  Hexham  to  Tunbert, — whom  we 
have  met  with  as  the  kinsman,  and  for  a  time  the  monastic 
superior,  of  Ceolfrid, — and  retained  for  himself  his  own 
Bishopric  Lindisfame  ^.  And  a  new  see  was  established  on  the 
eorn.  northern  frontier  of  the  realm,  in  a  monastery  at  Abercorn 

on  the  Firth  of  Forth,  west  of  the  present  Queensferry. 
The  place  is  described  by  Bede,  in  his  first  book,  as  *  about 
two  miles'  to  the  east  of  'a  spot  called  in  the  Pictish 
language  Peanfahel,'  whence  the  last  wall  built  by  the 
Britons  '  took  its  course  westwards  ^ ' ;  in  the  fourth  book, 
as  within  the  territory  of  the  English,  but  near  the  arm  of 
the  sea  which  divides  their  lands  from  those  of  the  Picts  *. 
Egfrid's  previous  successes  over  the  Picts  had  seemed  to 

Mother  '  with  intense  affection,'  being  in  a  distant  part  of  the  convent 
reserved  for  novices,  had  a  similar  dream  at  the  same  hour,  and  told 
it  to  her  companions  before  the  rest  of  the  community  knew  of  the 
death.  But  this  seems  inconsistent  with  Bede's  account  of  Hilda's  last 
Communion  and  farewell  address. 

*  Bede,  iii.  24.  See  a  letter  of  hers,  Bonifac.  Ep.  112.  Her  mother 
Eanfled,  Oswy's  widow,  was  in  some  way  associated  with  her  in  the  abbacy. 

'^  Bede,  iv.  12  :  '  Qui  etiam  post  tres  abscessionis  Vilfridi  annos,'  &c. 

^  Bede,  i.  12  :  *  Ineipit  autem  duorum  ferme  millium  spatio  a  mona- 
sterio  Aebbercurnig,'  &c.  On  '  Peanfahel '  see  Robertson,  Scotl.  under 
Early  Kings,  ii.  380,  and  Skene,  Celtic  Scotl.  i.  218;  also  Rhys,  Celt. 
Brit.  p.  153,  that  the  name  is  '  Brythonic,'  its  'Goidelic'  (Gaelic)  form 
being  Kennail.  The  two  former  writers  consider' the  Picts  to  have  been 
Gaelic  Celts,  akin  to  the  Irish  Picts  or  Cruithnigh,  otherwise  Cruithne, 
on  whom  see  Skene,  i.  131.  The  third  considers  that  the  name  Picts 
*  probably  most  strictly  applied  to  the  non-Celtic  natives,'  but  was 
'  never  perhaps  distinctive  of  race,'  p.  159. 

*  Bede,  iv.  26:  cp.  12.  In  the  App.  to  Florence,  Trumwine  is  named  as 
bishop  of  Candida  Casa.  This  is  a  strange  error.  That  see  ;cp.  p.  15) 
was  not  revived  until  shortly  before  731  ;  Bede,  v.  23. 


Foundation  of  Jarrow,  365 

confirm  the  Northumbrian  supremacy ;  and  it  was  natural  chap.  xi. 
to  employ  a  religious  house  within  a  short  distance  of  their 
own  territory  ^  as  a  base  of  missionary  operations  among 
them,  and  perhaps  as  a  centre  of  episcopal  supervision  for 
part  of  Lothian  ^ ;  and  Trumwine  was  consecrated  for  this 
outpost  of  the  English  Church. 

And  while  that  Church  was  thus  '  lengthening  her  cords '  Founda- 
northwards,  the  great  monastic  work  of  Benedict  Biscop  ^Irvow-. 
was  developing  itself  into  a  new  foundation  on  the  south 
bank  of  the  Tyne.  There  lay  a  domain  of  forty  hydes, 
situate  on  the  '  Gyrwy/  literally  a  marsh  (as  we  see  in 
the  name  of  the  Gyrvians  of  Cambridgeshire^),  but  here 
denoting  the  '  Slake '  or  smooth  *  bay,  where  the  king's 
ships  were  wont  to  ride  at  anchor.  The  old  word  lives 
in  that  name  of  Jarrow  which  is  for  ever  illustrious  from 
its  association  with  Bede.  This  estate  was  given  to 
Benedict  by  Egfrid  shortly  after  his  return  home  with 
John  the  Precentor,  that  is,  apparently,  in  the  autumn  of 
680  ■^.  The  king  '  saw  that  his  former  grants  had  been 
well  and  profitably  bestowed  ^ ' :  he  could  reasonably  hope 

^  The  proper  '  Pictland '  included  at  least  the  whole  of  Eastern  Scotland 
from  the  Firth  of  Forth  northwards,  and  by  far  the  larger  portion 
of  the  Highlands  ;  it  bordered  westward  on  the  territory  of  the  Dalriads 
or  Scots  from  Ireland;  Burton,  i.  183:  cp.  Robertson,  ii.  371,  Skene, 
i.  228  ff.  But  the  name  'Picts'  was  applied  to  tribes  settled  south 
of  the  Forth  ;  Skene,  i.  131,  238.  The  great  Northumbrian  kings  deprived 
them  of  indepsndence :  they  regained  it  in  685.  Robertson  explains  the 
'  terram  Pictorum  qui  Niduari  vocantur '  in  Bede's  Vit.  Cuthb.  11,  as 
the  neighbourhood  of  Abernethy,  ii.  383,  where  a  Pictish  king  Nechtan, 
probably  the  Nechtan  of  Bede,  v.  21,  dedicated  a  church  ;  but  Skene 
understands  it  of  the  district  of  the  river  Nith,  i.  133  ;  with  reference 
to  the  Picts  of  Galloway  :  so  Rhys,  Ce't.  Brit.  p.  220. 

^  It  seems  probable  that  advantage  would  be  taken  of  this  new  founda- 
tion to  relieve  Lindisfarne  of  part  of  its  charge  in  Lothian.  The  *  Historia 
de  S.  Cuthberto,'  after  narrating  the  appointment  of  Cuthbert  to  the  see 
of  Lindisfarne,  marks  the  northern  boundary  of  the  diocese  as  a  line  from 
Lammermoor  to  Eskmouth ;  Sim.  Op.  i.  199. 

^  See  above,  p.  286. 

*  I.e.  the  'sleek'  bay.  *Wira  .  .  .  qui  .  .  .  naves  serena  invectas 
aura  placidi  ostii  excipit  gremio ; '  Malmesb.  G.  Reg.  i.  3. 

^  *  Eight  years,'  says  the  Anon.  Hist.  (Bed.  Op.  vi.  419),  'after  they  had 
begun  to  found '  Wearmouth  this  reckoning  begins  from  Benedict's  return 
home  in  672.     Above,  p.  306. 

*  Bede  Hist.  Abb.  6  :  '  Quia  bene  se  ac  fruetuose  donasse  conspexit.* 


366  Foundation  of  Jarrow, 

CHAP.  XI.  that  the  new  endowment  would  be  equally  satisfactory,  but 
could  never  have  foreseen  the  glory  which  was  to  rest  upon 
it.  Visit  the  place  as  it  is,  and  on  your  way  to  the  ancient 
church  ^  (now  excellently  cared  for),  you  see  only  a  crowd 
of  mean  cottages  occupied  by  pitmen,  and  enveloped  in 
a  murky  atmosphere :  a  strange  contrast  to  the  appearance 
which  it  must  have  presented  when,  '  a  year  after  ^ '  the 
land  had  been  obtained,  that  is,  in  the  autumn  of  681,  the 
buildings  actually  necessary  for  conventual  life^  were  so 
far  completed  that  twenty-two  inmates  of  Wearmouth, 
*  ten  of  them  being  already  tonsured,  and  twelve  still 
awaiting  the  privilege  of  the  tonsure*,'  were  conducted 
by  Ceolfrid  as  their  abbot  to  take  possession  of  their  new 
home  at  Jarrow.  This  house  'of  St.  Paul'  was  to  be  united 
with  St.  Peter's  at  Wearmouth  in '  the  brotherly  fellowship 
of  the  first  Apostles,'  so  that  the  two  should  be  virtually 
'one  monastery^  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul  situated  in  two 
places,'  the  inmates  of  both  being  bound  together  by 
*a  common  and  perpetual  affection  and  intimacy,'  and 
rendered  as  inseparable  as  the  body  and  the  head  of 
a  living  man.  The  building  of  the  abbey  church  was  not 
taken  in  hand  immediately  ^  as  in  the  case  of  Wearmouth, 
but  in  the  third  year  from  the  foundation  of  the  monastery ; 
yet,  in  spite  of  the  small  number  of  workmen  employed,  it 

^  Its  chancel  contains  some  portions  of  the  original  structure  ;  but  on 
this  point  J.  H.  Parker  (Introd.  Goth.  Archit,  p.  36)  speaks  less  unre- 
servedly than  Freeman  (N.  Conq.  v.  899).  * Bede's  chair,'  in  the  sanctuary, 
is  not  authentic. 

^  So  Bede,  1.  c.  In  Anon.  Hist.  Abb.,  '  locum  primis  autumni  absces- 
sum '  may  be  corrected  to  '  locum  priore  autumno  concessum.* 

'  Anon.  Hist.  Abb. 

*  '  Tonsurae  adhuc  gratiam  exspectantibus  ; '  Anon.  Hist.  Abb.  Bede 
is  less  exact :  '  Monks  in  number  about  seventeen.'  *  By  no  means  all  of 
them  vs-ere  able  to  chant,  still  less  to  read  in  church,  or  to  recite  antiphons 
or  responsories  ;  but  they  made  rapid  progress,  through  their  monastic 
zeal,  and  the  example  of  their  ruler's  assiduity  ; '  "Anon.  Hist. 

*  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  12  :  *  Sicut  rectius  dicere  possumus,  in  duobus  locis 
posito  uni  monasterio  beatorum  .  .  .  Petri  et  Pauli.'  See  ib.  6,  *  ut  sicut 
corpus  a  capite,'  &c.  ;  and  v.  24,  '  monasterii .  .  .  Petri  et  Pauli  quod  est 
ad  Viuraemuda  et  Ingyruum.*'  Alcuin,  in  793,  writes  *  fratribus  Wirensis 
ecclesiae  et  Gyrvensis,'  as  forming  one  'congregatio '  ;  Ep.  13. 

*  See  Anon.  Hist.  Abb.  The  work  began  at  the  spot  'where  Egfrid 
himself  had  fixed  on  the  site  for  the  altar.' 


Bede,  367 

was  finished  in  the  second  year  from  the  commencement ;  chap.  xi. 
so  that,  according  to  an  ancient  inscription  once  visible  on 
the  wall  of  Jarrow  church,  on  the  9th  of  the  Calends  of 
May,  i.  e.  the  23rd,  in  the  fifteenth  year  of  Egfrid's  reign, 
and  the  fourth  of  Ceolfrid's  abbacy,— that  is,  on  April  23, 
684 \— the  'dedication  of  the  basilica  of  St.  Paul  was 
solemnized.'  Among  the  twelve  untonsured  monastic  Bede. 
colonists  was  a  little  boy  of  about  eight,  who  had  been 
born,  in  673  2,  on  the  lands  which  very  shortly  afterwards 
were  granted  to  Benedict  Biscop  for  the  foundation  of 
Wearmouth  abbey.  The  child  Bgeda  (a  namesake  of  an 
ancient  prince  of  Lindsey  ^,  and  also  of  a  priest  accustomed 
to  attend  upon  Cuthbert  *,  was  '  given  ^  by  the  care  of  his 
kinsfolk  to  abbot  Benedict,'  when  he  was  '  seven  years  old, 
to  be  educated.'  From  that  day  forward  he  lived  under 
monastic  rule  as  a  member  of  the  community,  being  taken 
by  Ceolfrid  to  Jarrow  about  a  year  after  he  had  been 
received  at  Wearmouth.  There  lay  before  him,  at  that 
date,  some  fifty-four  years*,  which  were  to  be  almost 
eventless  in  regard  to  his  personal  history,  and  unmarked 

^  Egfrid's  fourteenth  year  ended  in  the  February  of  684.  A  copy  of  the 
insci-iption  is  in  the  north  porch  of  the  church.  See  it  in  Bp.  Browne's 
Conversion  of  the  Heptarchy,  p.  209. 

^  Bede  was  in  his  fifty-ninth  year  (so  he  tells  us)  when  he  wrote  the 
precious  little  autobiography  which  follows  the  epitome  of  events  in  v.  24. 
Now  that  epitome,  like  the  History  proper  (see  v.  23,  end),  ends  in  a.  d. 
731.  And  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  the  autobiography  was  written 
a  year  later.  If,  then,  he  had  completed  fifty-eight  years  in  731,  he  was 
born  in  673.  So  Mabillon  in  his  '  Elogium,'  in  Smith's  Bede,  p.  799. 
So  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  189.  Plummer  says  672  or  673.  The  'anonymous 
presbyter's '  Life  of  Bede  wrongly  assigns  the  year  677.  So  Simeon,  Dun. 
Eccl.  i.  8. 

^  Florence,  App.  See  Moberly,  p.  xii,  on  this  '  Beda,'  father  of  *  Biscop,' 
and  on  Benedict  Biscop  as  called  '  Baducing '  by  Eddi.  It  has  been 
suggested  that  Bede  was  not  an  Angle,  but  a  Celt,  perhaps  a  '  Pict  of 
Galloway.'  But  no  writer  not  of  English  blood  could  exhibit  so  thoroughly 
English  a  tone.  His  sympathy  with  the  Picts  fiv.  26\  like  his  sympathy 
with  the  insurgent  Mercians  (iii.  24^  shows  merely  that  his  love  of  justic* 
was  stronger  than  his  Northumbrian  patriotism. 

*  '  Major  Beda  ; '  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  37. 

'  'Datus  sum;*  Bede,  v.  24.  See  above,  p.  201.  For  the  routine 
of  a  boy's  life  in  a  monastery,  see  Turner,  iii.  18. 

^  He  died  on  the  afternoon  of  Wednesday,  the  eve  of  the  Ascension, 
May  25,  735,  and  after  the  feast  had  ritually  begun. 


368  Bede, 

CHAP.  XI.  by  anything  which  could  associate  him  with  what  may  be 
called  the  political  history  of  his  Church.  We  seem  to  be 
looking,  not  on  a  landscape  of  grand  and  varied  outline, 
but  on  some  rich  level  land  watered  by  soft  streams  and 
reposing  in  broad  sunlight.  There  is  monotony,  but  it  is 
the  monotony  of  tranquil,  regular,  and  nobly  fruitful  work. 
Ever  since  the  lad  began  his  Scriptural  studies  under  the 
care  of  Trumbert,  a  monk  who  had  been  trained  by  Chad\ 
and  other  such  instructors,  he  showed  the  true  spirit  of 
a  Christian  scholar.  He  studied  with  unremitting  industry, 
and  with  the  dutiful  single-heartedness  of  one  who  knew 
that  he  had  to  form  himself  into  a  teacher, — that  this  was 
the  path  in  which  he  was  appointed  to  walk,  the  sphere  in 
which  he  was  to  work  for  the  glory  of  God  and  the  good 
of  his  fellow-men.  He  has  no  literary  ambition,  although 
he  enjoys  his  work  as  keenly  as  a  poet  or  an  original 
thinker  might  rejoice  in  the  outpouring  of  verse  or  the 
construction  of  theory:  'I  ever  found  it  sweet,'  he  says, 
looking  back  upon  those  years  of  happy  labour,  '  to  learn, 
or  to  teach,  or  to  write  ^.'  In  one  sense,  it  is  true,  he  '  is 
original  in  nothing  ^ ' ;  but  looking  at  him  as  a  literary 
phenomenon  rising  up  all  at  once  in  a  remote  corner  of 
the  England  of  his  time,  he  is  one  of  the  most  original 
personages  in  history.  And  he  is  more,— he  is  one  of 
the  most  admirable  and  lovable.  Our  first  truly  national 
scholar  and  author,  the  father  of  our  history,  the  man  in 
whom  our  '  literature  strikes  its  roots,  in  whom,'  although 
he  never  saw  foreign  countries, '  the  whole  learning  of  his 
age  seemed  to  be  summed  up  *,'  the  '  adapter  of  the  sacred 

^  Bede,  iv.  3  :  '  Sicut  mihi  frater  quidam  de  eis  qui  me  in  Scripturis 
erudiebant,'  &c.  During  these  boyish  studies,  he  fell  in  with  the  work 
of  a  *  chronographus  haeresiarches '  of  the  fourth  century ;  Ep.  3,  to 
Plegwin,  Op.  i.  151. 

,  2  Bede,  v.  24  :  '  Amid '  monastic  duties,  *  semper  aut  discere,  aut  docere, 
aut  scribere,  dulce  habui.*  See  Alcuin,  Ep  13  :  '  Recogitate  nobilissimum 
nostri  temporis  magistrum  Bedam  .  .  .  quale  habuit  in  juventute  discendi 
studium.' 

^  Chr.  Remembrancer,  No.  52,  p.  344  (April,  1846). 

*  See  Turner,  iii.  408,  and  the  worthy  estimate  in  Green's  Making  of 
Engl.  pp.  399-404.  Aldhelm,  of  course,  preceded  him  as  a  scholar,  but 
he  has  no  permanent  connexion  with  English  literature.    See  the  minute 


Bede,  369 

lore  of  the '  ancient  '  Church  to  the  peculiar  wants  of  his  chap.  xr. 
nation^,'  conspicuous,  as  a  narrator,  for  honest  carefulness ^ 
and  by  the  vivid  sympathy  which  makes  incident  or  story 
so  luminous  under  his  touch  ^,  Bede  is  throughout  the  man 
of  patriotic  feeling,  who  loves  old  English  songs  ^,  and  hates 
whatever  enfeebles  his  country  or  degrades  the  national 
life  ^ ; — the  man  of  warm  heart,  whose  affections  go  out  to 
friends  and  pupils,  who  is  spoken  of  as  a  '  dear  father '  and 
a  'most  beloved  master^,' — and  the  man  of  thoroughly  pious 
soul,  'who  shudders '  when  ignorantly  charged  with  heresy"^, 
calls  sin  by  its  right  name  in  monks  or  prelates  ^,  and  lives 
in  the  thought  of  Divine  judgement  and  Divine  mercy^; 

references  to  classical  writers  in  Bede's  *De  Orthographia,'  where  also  it 
appears  that  he  had  studied  Greek :  compare  the  '  De  Retract.  Act,/  and 
the  '  De  Arte  Metrica/  and  the  '  De  Tropis/  &c.  Chronological  points  had 
a  great  attraction  for  him,  especially  as  bearing  on  the  question  of  Easter. 
His  erudition  did  not,  indeed,  preserve  him  from  some  errors  then 
current.  His  style  is  remarkably  free  from  the  pedantic  affectations 
which  disfigure  that  of  Aldhelm.     On  his  learning,  cf.  Hodgkin,  vi.  422. 

^  Chr.  Remembr.  1.  c. 

'■^  'An  extremely  honest  narrator,  with  a  strong  sagacity  for  finding 
historical  truth  ; '  Burton,  Hist,  Scotl.  i.  68.  Cp.  Diet,  Chr.  Biogr.,  i.  301  ; 
Green,  p,  402;  Skene,  ii.  44.  Goldwin  Smith,  in  his  collected  'Lectures 
and  Essays,'  calls  Bede's  work  '  the  highest  product  of  that  memorable 
burst  of  Saxon  intellect  which  followed  the  conversion, — a  work  not 
untainted  by  miracle  and  legend,  but  most  remarkable  for  its  historical 
qualities,  as  well  as  for  its  mild  and  liberal  Christianity.'  For  his  honesty 
as  to  Biblical  difficulties,  e.  g.  that  of  the  '  second  Cainan,'  see  his  comment 
on  Luke  iii.  36,  Prolog,  in  Exp.  Act.,  Praef.  de  Retract.  Act,,  and  Ep.  to 
Plegwin.     On  his  regard  for  '  textual  criticism '  cp.  Plummer,  i.  p.  liv. 

^  It  cannot  indeed  be  denied  that  he  is  not  infrequently  wrong  in  his 
dates  (e.  g.  i.  6  ;  ii.  5  ;  iii.  4,  &c.)  and  involved  in  his  way  of  telling  a  story 
f,e.  g.  as  to  SS.  Aidan,  Oswald,  Fursey,  Cuthbert).  His  credulity  as  to 
wonders  connected  with  saints,  &c.,  belongs  to  the  ecclesiastical  mind  of 
his  age  ;  but  he  is  careful  to  specify  his  evidence,  as  in  iii.  9,  12,  16,  27  ; 
iv.  7,  14,  22,  25,  32  ;  V.  I,  2,  6,  12  ;  V.  C.  30,  31,  36.  The  '  Excerpta  *  which 
cite  a  prediction  about  the  '  Colysaeus '  (Colosseum)  are  not  his. 

*  '  Erat  doctus  in  nostris  carminibus ; '  Cuthbert's  account  of  his  death, 
Bed.  Op.  i.  p.  clxiv.  He  knew  the  hymns  of  Ambrose,  Sedulius,  &c.  ;  De 
Art.  Metr.  11,  &c.     Bvit  his  own  hymns  are  rather  poor  ;  one  is  in  iv.  20. 

^  Ep.  to  Egbert,  6,  7. 

^  See  Cuthbert,  as  above.    Cp,  De  Arte  Metrica,  fin. ;  Ep,  13.  13. 

^  Ep.  3,  to  Plegwin  (a.d.  707).  This  charge  meant  that  he  had  denied 
the  Incarnation  to  have  taken  place  in  the  sixth  age  of  the  world.  Cp, 
Ep.  14.     He  is  vehement  against  Julian  the  Pelagian  ;  in  Cant.  i. 

^  Bede,  iv.  25  ;  v.  14.     Ep.  to  Egb.  2,  3,  &c.,  and  De  Temp.  Ratione,  c.  68. 

*  See  above,  p.  356.  Afflictions,  in  Bede's  eyes,  were  often  'grace-tokens.' 

B  b 


370  Bede, 

CHAP.  XI.  who  describes  himself  through  life  as  '  rejoicing  to  serve 
the  Supreme  Loving-kindness^/  and,  student  as  he  is, 
comes  regularly  to  the  daily  offices  2,  and  is  supposed  to 
have  said  in  his  sweet  way  that  the  angels  must  not  find 
him  absent  ^ ;  who  closes  his  History  with  a  thanksgiving 
to  the  '  good  Jesus '  for  the  '  sweet  draught '  of  Divine 
knowledge,  and  a  prayer  to  be  brought  safe  to  the  Divine 

*  Fountain  of  all  wisdom  * ' ;  who  in  his  last  hours  combines 
a  loving  trust  in  God  and  a  '  desire  to  be  with  Christ '  with 
a  sense  of  the  awfulness  of  the  'need-fare '  and  the  Doom  ^; 
who  spends  his  last  minutes  of  working  power  in  dictating 
an  English  version  of  St.  John's  Gospel^,  calls  his  tasks 
'finished'  when  the  last  sentence  has  been  written,  and 

See  Hist.  Abb.  9,  *  Bivina  utrumque  pietas  temporali  aegritudine  prostravit 
in  lectum;'  cp.  iv.  9,  23  (quoting  2  Cor.  xii.  9^,  29,  31  ;  and  Ep.  6,  that 

*  adversa '  are  to  be  '  endured  quasi  a  justo  judice  et  pio  patre  irrogata 
flagella,'  &c.  In  one  striking  passage  he  speaks  of  ' godly  fear'  as  passing 
on  into  *  godly  love,'  iv.  25. 

^  *  Supernae  pietati  deservire  gaudeo,'  v.  24.  Among  his  last  words 
were,  '  Bene  mihi  pius  Judex  vitam  meam  praevidit.*  '  I  never  saw  or 
heard  of  any  one  who  was  so  diligent  in  rendering  thanks  to  the  living 
God  ;'  Cuthbert.     See  his  'Psalter,'  and  Plummer,  i.  p.  Ixv  ff. 

^  '  Quotidianam  cantandi  in  ecclesia  curam  ; '  Bede,  v.  24.  See  above, 
p.  288.     Cp.  Bede,  iv.  19  ;  Hist.  Abb.  13  ;  Horn.  8  fin.,  and  40  fin. 

^  See  Alcuin,  Ep.  219  (Op.  ed.  Froben.  i.  282)  :  '  Fertur  dixisse  Bedam, 
**  Scio  angelos  visitare  canonicas  horas  .  .  .  quid  si  ibi  me  non  inveniunt 
inter  fratres  ?  Nonne  dicere  habent,  Ubi  est  Beda  ?  " '  Quoted  in  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  iii.  471.     See  above,  p.  315. 

*  '  Teque  deprecor,  bone  Jesu,'  &c. ;  Bede,  v.  24.  Cp.  the  verses  in  De 
Loc.  Sanct.  19,  and  Vit  Cuthb.  42  ;  Hom.  34  and  42,  fin.  Even  when 
treating  of  the  changes  of  the  moon,  he  cannot  help  alluding  to  *  illam 
vitam  .  .  .  beatissimam,  quando  erit  lux  lunae  sicut  lux  solis'  (Isa.  xxx. 
26)  ;  De  Temp.  Eat.  43. 

^  Cuthbert,  as  above.  He  '  recited  verses  in  our  tongue,'  which  may 
be  thus  rendered  : — 

*  Man,  that  needs  from  hence  must  go, 

Too  much  thought  can  ne'er  bestow, 

Pondering,  ere  he  pass  away, 

Whether,  after  life's  last  day. 

Good  or  ill,  in  righteous  meed, 

For  his  soul  shall  be  decreed.' 
He  repeated  both  Heb.  x.  31  and  Phil.  i.  23.     Cp.  Bede,  iii.  19  ;  iv.  25  ; 
v.  13,  14.     Plummer  thinks  'Bede's  Penitential'  mo#  genuine. 

*  Cp.  Ep.  to  Egb.  3,  on  his  English  versions  of  the  creed  and  the  Lord's 
prayer  given  to  *  many  unlearned  priests.'  On  one  occasion  he  says  he  has 
been  his  own  *  secretary,  scribe,  and  copyist ' ;  Ep.  9. 


Invasion  of  Ireland,  371 

passes  away  with  his  head  resting  on  a  pupil's  hands,  with  chai-.  xr. 
his  eyes  fixed  on  his  wonted  place  of  devotion,  with  the 
'Gloria'  to  the  Trinity  as  the  last  utterance  of  his  lips^. 
*A  truly  blessed  man,'  we  may  well  say  with  the  eye- 
witness to  whom  we  owe  this  record;  a  man  'venerable' 
and  dear  to  all  generations  of  English  Christianity,  a 
'candle,'  in  the  words  of  the  great  St.  Boniface ^  'which 
the  Lord  lighted  up'  in  Northumbria,  and  which  has 
burned  with  a  calm  lustre  through  the  centuries  that  have 
canonized  his  name  ^. 

The  year  of  the  completion  of  the  minster  of  Jarrow  Invasion 
was  marked  by  trouble  and  anxiety  among  Northumbrian 
Churchmen.  Their  king,  from  motives  of  policy,  resolved 
to  make  an  expedition  against  Ireland*,  a  country,  says 
Bede,  which  had  ever  been  'friendly  to  the  English^,' 
and  had  furnished  homes  of  study  and  devotion  to  many 
of  all  ranks  among  the  Northumbrian  people  ^.  The  most 
eminent  of  these  English  residents  was  Egbert,  whom  Bede 
describes  with  such  admiration  as  a  '  priest  beloved  of  God ' 
and  *  to  be  named  with  all  honour  "^Z  one  who  lived  in  great 


^  *  Cum  Spiritum  Sanctum  nominasset,  spiritum  e  corpore  exhalavit 
ultimum  ; '  Cuthbert.     Cp.  Anon.  Vit.  B.  fin. ;  Plummer,  i.  Ixxviii. 
-  Ep.  38  to  archbishop  Egbert.     He  is  speaking  of  Bede's  '  treatises.' 
2  Although   he   is   in  the  calendar  (from  which  Alfred,   the   noblest 
example  of  old  English  Christianity,  is  excluded),  his  title  of  ^  Venerable ' 
has  almost  superseded  that  of  *  Saint.' 

*  Bede,  iv.  26,  calling  it  both  '  Hiberniam '  and  '  Scottiam ' ;  cp.  ii.  4, 
and  iii.  19,  on  Fursey's  life  *in  Scottia.'  So  Adamnan,  Vit.  Col.  i.  2, 
'  Columba  .  .  .  de  Scotia  ad  Britanniam  .  .  .  enavigavit,'  and  in  many  other 
passages.     Until  the  tenth  century  '■  Scotia '  meant  simply  Ireland. 

'  Bede,  1.  c.  :  '  gentem  innoxiam  et  nationi  Anglorum  semper  amicissi- 
mam.*  Lanigan  (iii.  90)  thinks  that  Egfrid  might  have  been  jealous  of 
'  the  shelter  granted  by  the  Irish  to  his  brother  Aldfrid ' ;  see  below.  He 
probably  meant  to  prevent  them  from  aiding  the  Picts  and  the  Scots  of 
Dalriada  to  shake  off  his  supremacy  (see  Skene,  i.  265).  Bede,  we  see, 
has  no  feeling  against  Celts  as  such — only  against  Welshmen. 

*  Bede,  iii.  27  :  '  Erant  ibidem  eo  tempore  multi,' &c.  See  above,  pp. 
184,  212,  294:  and  Bede,  i.  i,  on  'codices'  from  Ireland.  Cp.  Aldhelm, 
Ep.  3,  that  English  students  flocked  to  Ireland  like  swarms  of  bees 
gathering  honey. 

■^  Bede,  v.  9,  '  Eo  tempore  venerabilis,'  &c.,  and  v.  22.  See  also  iii.  4, 
'  At  tunc  veniente,'  &c,,  and  iv.  3,  '  Convenit  autem.'  On  this  '  favourite 
of  Bede,'  see  Burton,  Hist.  Sc.  i.  275. 

B  b  2 


372  Invasion  of  Ireland. 

CHAP.  xr.  humility,  gentleness,  continence,  simplicity,  righteousness, 
and  did  much  good  both  by  his  persuasive  teaching  and 
the  consistency  of  his  life  ^.  This  eminent  man  earnestly 
dissuaded  Egfrid  from  his  unrighteous  design  of  '  attacking 
Ireland,  which  was  doing  him  no  hurt':  but  the  king 
was  not  to  be  moved,  and  sent  one  of  his  ealdormen 
Beret  or  Bert  ^,  with  a  strong  force,  into  Ireland,  in 
JunCj  684.  '■  Miserably,'  says  Bede,  was  the  land  wasted ; 
'not  even  churches  or  monasteries'  were  spared.  The 
scene  of  these  unprovoked  and  sacrilegious  ravages  is 
laid  by  the  Irish  chronicles  in  the  rich  '  plain  of  Bregh  ^' 
the  present  East  Meath.  The  natives,  failing  to  repel 
the  invasion,  had  recourse  to  a  weapon  which  suited  the 
wilder  side  of  Celtic  religion :  they  '  called  down  vengeance 
from  Heaven '  on  the  invaders  '  by  long-continued  impre- 
cations*.' 'And  although,'  continues  Bede,  'those  who 
curse  cannot  possess  the  kingdom  of  God,  yet  it  has  been 
believed  that  those  who  were  thus  cursed  in  requital  of 
their  impiety  did  quickly  pay  the  penalty  of  their  guilt 
under  the  avenging  hand  of  the  Lord.'  We  shall  presently 
understand  this  allusion. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  year,  Theodore,  for  some  reason 
unexplained,  had  thought  fit  to  depose  Tunbert  from  the 
see  of  Hexham  ^.    Who  was  to  succeed  him  ?    The  question 

^  Cp.  Bede,  iii.  27  :  '  Duxit  autem  vitam  in  magna  humilitate,*  &c.,  and 
V.  22,  '■  Qui  quoniam  et  doctor  suavissimus/  &c. 

2  Bede,  iv.  26  ;  in  v.  24,  Berctred  (or  Brectrid,  Ulster  Ann,).  Cp.  Chron. 
a.  684,  '  and  Briht  his  ealdorman.'  This  '  dux'  was  slain  by  the  Picts  in 
699,  perhaps  in  an  attempt  to  reconquer  their  country. 

3  Chron.  Scotorum,  p.  107  ;  but  the  date,  681,  is  wrong.  The  Ulster 
Annals  give  the  right  year  (Chron.  Scots  and  Picts,  p.  351).  Tighernach 
(giving  a  wrong  date,  685")  says,  *  The  Saxons  wasted  the  field  of  Bregh 
and  many  churches,  in  mense  Junii.'  The  Four  Masters  say,  'And  they 
took  away  many  captives  and  much  spoil ; '  (O'Conor,  Rer.  Hib.  Scr.  iv. 
63).  For  this  'plain,'  see  Adamnan,  Vit.  Col. J.  38,  ii.  39,  and  Reeves, 
p.  xlv. 

*  Imprecation  was  freely  employed  against  enemies  by  Irish  saints,  as 
by  Columba  himself;  Adamnan,  Vit.  Col.  ii.  22.  See  Reeves's  remarks, 
App.  to  Pref.  p.  Ixxvii.  It  was  freely  attributed  by  legend  to  St.  Patrick 
(in  the  Tripartite  Life,  i.  109,  11 1,  &c.),  and  it  appears  in  the  story  of 
St.  Ruadan  cursing  the  royal  hill  of  Tara  for  the  crime  of  the  arch-king 
Dermid  ;  M^'Gee,  Hist.  Irel.  i.  30.  Cp.  Reeves,  p.  liv,  on  *  fasting  against 
enemies.'  ^  Bede  only  mentions  this  incidentally  ;  iv.  28. 


I 


Assembly  at  Twyford,  373 

was  speedily  answered  by  Egfrid :  he  thought  of  Cuthbert,  chap.  xr. 
still  an  anchorite  on  Fame.  After  this  intention  had 
become  notorious,  Cuthbert  met  the  royal  abbess  of  Whitby, 
by  appointment,  on  an  island  at  the  mouth  of  the  river 
Coquet,  which  was  occupied  by  a  large  monastic  com- 
munity ^  During  their  conversation,  he  was  said  to  have 
predicted  to  Elfled  ^  that  her  brother  would  have  but  one 
more  year  of  life  ^,  and  that  his  successor  would  be  found 
amid  the  isles  of  the  sea :  alluding,  as  it  was  thought,  to 
'  Aldf rid,  who  was  said  to  be  a  son  of  her  father,  and  was 
then  dwelling  far  from  home,  in  the  isles  of  the  Irish,  for 
the  sake  of  learning.'  Cuthbert  then  returned  to  Fame ; 
and  in  the  autumn  a  numerous  assembly,  or,  as  Bede  calls 
it,  a  synod* — clearly  a  mixed  body  of  ecclesiastics  and 
laics — met  at  '  Twyford,' — perhaps  where  the  Aln  is  crossed  Synod  of 
by  two  fords  near  Whittingham, — under  the  presidency 
of  the  archbishop^,  as  representing  the  Church,  and  of 
Egfrid  as  the  head  of  the  nation.  Cuthbert  was  unani- 
mously chosen  bishop :  many  envoys  were  sent  to  Fame 
to  announce  the  election,  but  the  hermit  sat  secure  and 
inaccessible  in  his  cell.  '  At  last  the  king  himself  *^,'  with 
Bishop  Trumwine  of  Abercorn,  and  a  number  of  monks 
and  '  powerful  men,'  proceeded  to  Bamborough,  crossed  the 
'Fairway'  strait,  and  landed  on  Fame,  where  they  were 
met  by  many  of  the  Lindisfarne  brethren.  Cuthbert  could 
no  longer  keep  himself  in  seclusion.  His  visitors,  we  are 
told,  even  knelt  at  his  feet,  '  adjuring  him  by  the  Lord, 
with  tears,'  to  accept  the  election.  At  last,  with  tears  in 
his  own  eyes,  he  yielded,  went  with  them  to  Twyford,  and, 
although  very  reluctantly,  'bowed  his  neck  to  the  yoke 

^  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  24.  Elfled  believed  that  she  had  been  cured  of  an 
infirmity  in  the  limbs  by  putting  on  a  linen  girdle  sent  by  Cuthbert ; 
ib.  23. 

2  Believing  in  his  prophetic  powers,  she  adjured  him,  says  Bede, 
*  by  that  awful  and  adorable  name  of  the  Heavenly  King  and  His 
angels.' 

^  He  quoted  Eccles.  xi.  8,  and  Ps.  xc.  9,  in  proof  of  the  short  duration 
of  even  a  long  life. 

*  See  above,  p.  223,  on  the  council  of  Whitby. 

'  Bede,  iv.  28 ;  Vit.  Cuthb.  24  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  165. 

'  Bede,  iv.  28.     The  Anon.  Vit.  calls  the  bishop  'Tumma.* 


374         Cuthberty  bishop  of  Lindtsfarne, 


Cuthbert, 
bishop  of 
Lindis- 
farne. 


CHAP.  XI.  of  the  episcopate  ^.'  The  consecration  was  deferred  until 
the  spring;  but  during  the  interval  Cuthbert  spent  some 
time  with  Eata  at  Melrose,  and  on  his  return  visited  a  thane 
of  Egfrid,  and  was  believed  to  have  cured  the  deathlike 
illness  of  his  servant  ^. 

So  it  was,  that  on  Easter-day,  March  26,  685,  Theodore, 
with  six  other  bishops,  consecrated  Cuthbert  in  St.  Peter's 
minster  at  York  ^.  He  had  been  elected  for  Hexham  :  but 
out  of  deference  to  his  love  for  Lindisfarne,  the  gentle 
Eata,  his  old  superior,  returned  to  Hexham,  and  Cuthbert 
was  now  not  only,  as  Boisil  had  predicted*,  a  bishop, 
but  bishop  of  that  revered  church  in  which  he  had  been 
so  active  a  prior.  Before  he  quitted  York,  the  king,  in 
Theodore's  presence,  gave  to  Cuthbert  the  land  '  from  the 
wall  of  St.  Peter's  to  the  great  gate  westwards^,  and  to 
the  city  wall  southwards,'  together  with  the  village  of 
Crayke  as  a  halting-place  in  his  journeys  to  and  from 
York^,  and  the  far  more  valuable  possession — one  which 
seemed  to  herald  the  future  princedom  of  his  successors 
in  lordly  Durham — of  the  old  Roman  city  of  '  Lugubalia ' 
or  Carlisle  '^,  which  had  been  conquered  from  the  Britons 
of    Cumbria,  together   with   a   territory  of   fifteen   miles 


i 


^  '  Ad  suscipiendum  .  .  .  officium  collum  submittere  compellitur ;'  Bede, 
iv.  28  ;  Vit.  Cuthb.  24  ;  De  Mirac.  Cuthb.  c.  21. 

2  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  25  ;  Anon.  Vit.  calls  the  thane  '  Sibba.' 

^  Bede,  iv.  28  :  'In  ipsa  solemnitate  paschali,'  &c.  Cp.  Rich,  of  Hexh,, 
Hagulst.  Eccl.  10 ;  X  Script.  295. 

*  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  8. 

•''  This  gate  was  on  the  site  of  Bootham  Bar. 

"  Sim.  Hist.  Dun.  Eccl.  i.  9.  Crayke  would  be  a  convenient  halting- 
place  to  one  travelling  from  the  north,  before  entering  the  forest  of 
Galtres,  which  lay  between  it  and  York,  and  covered  nearly  100,000 
acres.  Cuthbert  is  said  to  have  established  an  abbot  and  monks  at 
Crayke,  which  within  this  century  continued  to  be  part  of  the  diocese 
of  Durham.  St.  Cuthbert's  remains,  in  their  'wanderings,'  halted  for 
four  months  'in  sua  quondam  villa  .  .  .  Creca' ;  Bed.  Op.  vi.  392.  Cp. 
De  Mirac.  et  Transl.  in  Sim.  Op.  i.  237. 

'  Sim.  1.  c.  A  charter  as  to  these  grants  (Wilkins,  i.  55  ;  Smith's 
Bede,  p.  782)  is  clearly  spurious  ;  it  exhibits  the  names  of  Cedd  and  Chad. 
Lugubalia  (Bede,  iv.  29,  the  Roman  form  of  Caer  Lywelydd),  Ligualid, 
or  Lualid  (Nennius,  76),  was  otherwise  called  'Caer-luel'  or  'Luel,'  and 
in  the  ninth  century  '  Lulchester ' ;  Freeman,  Engl.  Towns  and  Districts, 
p.  427  ;  Bishop  Creighton's  '  Carlisle,'  p.  3. 


Egfrtd  attacks  the  Picts,  375 

around, — and  afterwards  the  district  of  Cartmel  in  Lanca-  chap.  xr. 
shire,  with  the  Britons  belonging  to  it  as  serfs  ^.  And 
so  the  shepherd  youth  of  Lammermoor,  the  scholar  of 
Boisil,  the  evangelist  of  Tweedside,  the  prior  of  Melrose 
and  Lindisfarne,  the  hermit  of  Fame,  began  his  short 
career  as  a  bishop. 

The  first  weeks  of  his  episcopate  were  clouded  by  a 
public  anxiety,  which  was  soon  to  be  justified  by  a  national 
disaster.  Egfrid,  remembering  how,  fifteen  years  before, 
he  had  crushed  the  Picts'  revolt,  determined  to  invade 
their  country,  still  governed  by  the  same  king,  Bruide^. 
His  '  friends,'  and  Cuthbert  with  them,  urgently  remon- 
strated ^,  but  in  vain.  As  when  the  Irish  expedition  was 
in  question,  so  in  this  more  perilous  venture,  in  which 
he  was  personally  to  take  the  chief  part,  he  was  deaf 
to  the  best  counsels.  He  would  go,  and  he  went  ^.  Then 
fell  on  many  a  thoughtful  Northumbrian  the  shadow  of 
a  great  dread.  Was  the  king  judicially  blinded  ?  Were 
the  curses  of  the  wronged  Irish  working  their  effect 
by  leading  him  to  his  destruction  ?  It  was  iust  then  that  Cutlibert 
the  bishop  of  Lindisfarne  made  a  journey  to  his  new 
domain  of  Carlisle,  whither  Ermenburga  had  repaired 
to  pass  the  time  of  suspense  in  a  nunnery  governed  by 
her  sister  ^.    The  day  after  Cuthbert's  arrival  was  Saturday, 

^  The  Hist,  de  S.  Cuthb.  6  (Sim.  Op.  i.  200)  says  that  Cuthbert  entrusted 
this  property  to  abbot  Kineferth.  Carham  near  Coldstream  was  also  said 
to  have  been  given  to  him,  Hist,  de  S.  Cuthb.  7. 

2  This  was  Bruide,  or  Bruidi,  Mac  Bill,  who  had  become  king  in  672, 
and  died  in  693  (Skene,  i.  262).  Nennius  calls  him  Birdei,  the  cousin 
of  Egfrid  ;  Mon.  H.  Br.  p.  74.  He  had  established  himself  as  king  of 
'  Fortrenn,'  in  a  stronghold  east  of  Loch  Earn.  The  name  was  common 
among  Pictish  kings  ;  another  Bruide  had  died  in  641  ;  the  more  famous 
Bruide  Mac  Malcon,  St.  Columba's  convert  (Bede,  iii.  4 ;  Adamn.  Vit. 
Col.  i.  37,  ii.  35,  42),  had  reigned  (one  of  his  strongholds  being  probably 
near  Inverness)  from  554  to  584  (Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  15T).  Egfrid 
himself  was  akin  to  the  Pictish  royal  house  :  his  uncle  Eanfrid  (the 
'apostate,'  see  p.  147)  had  married  one  of  its  daughters,  and  their  son 
Talorcanwasking  of  the  Picts,  653-657.  After  his  death  Oswy  subjugated  the 
Picts  ;  they  revolted  against  Egfrid,  and  were  defeated  (Skene,  i.  257,  263). 

^  Bede,  iv.  26  :  '  Siquidem  anno  post  hunc  proximo.' 

*   'Bellum  Ecfridi,'  Adamn.  Vit.  Col.  ii.  46. 

'  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  27  ;  Anon.  Vit.  Cuthb.,  Bed.  Op.  vi.  377.  When 
Bede  wrote,  there  was  a  monastery  near  the  little  river  Dacre,  near 


376  Cuthbert  at  Carlisle, 

HAP.  XI.  the  20th  of  May :  at  3  p.m.  the  townsfolk,  headed  by  Paga  ^ 
their  reeve,  and  delighted  to  receive  the  saintly  bishop 
as  their  lord,  were  showing  him  their  walls,  on  which, 
just  then,  'the  sun  shone  fair^,'  and  conducting  him  to 
a  fountain  within  the  city, '  the  wondrous  work  of  Roman 
hands  ^.'  Cuthbert  was  attended  by  several  of  his  clergy. 
Suddenly,  while  leaning  on  his  staff,  he  seemed  to  go 
through  strong  mental  agitation.  His  face,  usually  so 
bright  and  sweet,  became  sad  and  downcast ;  after  a  while 
he  looked  up,  gazed  on  the  sky,  which  had  rapidly 
darkened,  groaned  deeply,  and  muttered  as  to  himself, 
'  Perhaps  even  now  the  contest  is  decided  *  ! '  A  presbyter, 
standing  close  beside  him,  asked  what  he  meant  ^.  He 
answered  evasively  by  a  general  reference  to  the  changing 
weather,  and  then  to  the  inscrutable  judgements  of  God. 
But  he  straightway  returned  to  the  convent,  saw  the  queen 
in  private,  and  said  to  her,  '  Set  off"  early  on  Monday  for 
York^,  lest  haply  the  king  may  have  fallen: — it  is  not 
lawful  to  drive  on  the  Lord's  day  '^.    I  have  to  go  to-morrow 

Penrith  ;  Bede,  iv.  32.  Egfrid  had  established  Northumbrian  clergy  in 
Cumberland,  and  his  sister  Elfled  had  founded  monasteries  :  Creighton, 
p.  18. 

^  The  anonymous  biographer  gives  this  name,  and  the  hour. 

^  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  vi.  1 1. 

2  Comp.  Malmesb.  G.  Pontif.  p.  208,  on  the  Roman  '  triclinium  lapideis 
fornicibus  concameratum,'  existing  in  his  time  at  Carlisle.  See  Freeman, 
Engl.  Towns  and  Districts,  p.  439. 

*  So  Bede.  The  anonymous  Life,  less  probably,  makes  him  refer 
explicitly  to  the  war.  '  O,  o,  o !  existimo  enim  perpetratum  esse 
bellum.' 

^  Anon.  Vit.,  *  Quid  factum  esset;'  Bede,  'Unde  scis?' 

'  'The  royal  city,'  Bede. 

''  '  Dominicorum  die  a  labore  terrene  cessandum  est ;'  Greg.  Ep.  xiii.  i. 
Various  Frankish  canons  of  the  sixth  century  forbade  all  Sunday  labour  : 
e.g.  council  of  Auxerre,  c.  16,  '  Non  licet  die  dominico  boves  jungere,' 
Mansi,  ix.  913  :  so  council  of  Chalons  as  to  rural  work,  ib.  x.  1193.  The 
council  of  Narboniie  allowed  for  cases  of  necessity;  c.  4.  The  third 
council  of  Orleans  condemned  Sabbatarian  notions  as  to  the  unlawfulness  of 
Sunday  travelling,  but  forbade  rural  work  on  Sundays,  as  detaining  men 
from  church  ;  Mansi,  ix.  19.  Gregory  of  Tours  tells  us  that  some  men  at 
Limoges  were  killed  by  lightning  for  doing  *  public  work '  on  Sunday ; 
H.  Fr.  X.  30.  For  a  story  about  St.  Patrick  warning  some  heathens  not 
to  build  a  '  rath*  or  earth-work  on  the  Lord's  day,  see  Stokes,  Tripartite 
Life,  ii.  289.     Theodore's  Penitential  says,  *  Greeks  and  Romans  do  not  go 


Battle  of  Dunnechtan,  377 

to  a  neighbouring  monastery,  in  order  to  dedicate  its  chap.  xi. 
church;  and  will  follow  you  after  the  service  is  com- 
pleted/ His  Sunday  sermon  was  on  the  necessity  of  being 
prepared  for  any  tribulation,  and  was  understood  to  refer 
to  a  return  of  the  pestilence  I  On  the  Monday  there 
arrived  a  man  'who  had  escaped  from  the  war,'  and 
brought  tidings  such  as  filled  Edinburgh  with  terror  and 
anguish  after  the  day  of  Flodden.  Egfrid  and  his  host 
had  crossed  the  Firth,  had  even  crossed  the  Tay,  and 
destroyed  two  forts,  one  of  which  probably  stood  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Almond  ^i  the  native  forces,  by  feigned 
retreats  ^  had  lured  them  into  a  defile  at  Dunnechtan  ^  Battle 
or  Nechtansmere  ^,  identified  as  Dunnichen  near  Forfar,  nechtan. 
There  the  king  had  fallen,  with  nearly  all  his  men,  on 
the  very  day,  and  at  the  very  hour,  when  Cuthbert  was 
standing  by  the  Carlisle  fountain  like  one  who  saw  what 
he  durst  not  reveal  ^\ 

This    battle    of    Dunnechtan    may   well    rank    in    our 

"  in  curru"  on  the  Lord's  day,  except  to  church  ; '  ii.  8.  i  ;  Haddan  and 
Stubbs,  iii.  196;  cp.  ib.  226  (Willibrord?),  332  (Bede?).  The  council  of 
Clovesho  forbade  Sunday  travelling  save  in  necessity,  c.  14  ;  ib.  367  :  and 
the  Laws  of  Northumbrian  Priests,  no.  55,  forbid  it  whether  in  a  wain,  or 
on  a  horse,  or  with  a  burden  ;  Thorpe,  Anc.  Laws,  p.  420;  Johnson,  Engl. 
Can.  i.  380.  St.  Anskar,  preaching  on  a  Sunday,  forbade  his  hearers  to  do 
'  opus  sei-vile  in  die  festo,'  Vit.  37  :  and  compare  the  story  of  St.  Olaf 
scorching  his  hand  in  penance  for  having  done  some  wood-cutting  on 
Sunday. 

^  He  told  the  story  of  the  monks  visiting  him  on  Christmas  day, — of 
his  forebodings, — of  the  outbreak  of  the  pest.     Above,  p.  305. 

^  Robertson,  Scotl.  under  Early  Kings,  i.  12. 

^  Bede,  iv.  26  :  *  simulantibus  fugam  hostibus  in  angustias  inacces- 
sorum  montium.'  The  Chronicle  says  the  place  was  near  '  the  North 
sea.' 

*  Tighernach.  He  gives  the  day  of  week  and  month,  but  a  wrong  year, 
686.     The  Ulster  Annals  are  again  right  as  to  the  date. 

•■*  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  186.  Sim.  Dunelm.  calls  it  *  Nechtansmere, 
quod  est  stagnum  Nechtani,'  de  Dun.  Eccl.  i.  9  :  Nennius,  Lin-garan, 
'  the  lake  of  the  heron,'  Mon.  H.  Brit.  p.  74.  '  This  lake  formerly  occupied 
the  place  of  Dunnichen  Moss  ; '  Reeves,  p.  187.  Dunnichen  lies  under  the 
Sidlaw  hills,  somewhat  east  of  Forfar.  More  than  one  Pictish  king  had 
been  called  Nechtan :  one  had  died  in  621  ;  Reeves,  p.  373.  For  the 
adoption  of  the  Catholic  usages  by  a  later  king  Nechtan,  see  below. 

®  Eadmer  exhibits  monastic  bitterness  of  an  extreme  type  in  his  story 
of  the  vision  of  Egfrid's  perdition  seen  by  Wilfrid  while  saying  mass  at 
this  same  hour ;  Vit.  S.  Wilfr.  43. 


378 


See  of  Abercorn  abandoned. 


memories  with  such  decisive  conflicts  as  those  of  the  Idle, 
of  Heavenfield,  and  of  Winwidfield  ^  It  marks  an  epoch, 
it  closes  a  period, — the  period  of  the  great  Northumbrian 
kings.  It  was  long  ere  the  crown  of  Edwin  and  Oswald 
resumed  the  majesty  of  their  wide  over-lordship.  From 
that  fatal  afternoon  in  the  May  of  685,  ^  the  hope  and  force 
of  the  Anglian  kingdom ' — so  Bede  says,  recurring  to  his 
favourite  poet — '  began  to  retreat  like  an  ebbing  tide  ^.' 
The  Picts  not  only  shook  off  the  Northumbrian  supremacy, 
but  regained  some  hold  upon  Lothian^:  the  Dalriad 
Scots,  and  '  some  of  the  Britons,  recovered  their  indepen- 
dence*,' which  they  still  enjoyed  when  Bede  wrote  thus, 
about  731.  The  old  Northumbrian  glory  returned  for 
a  while  after  his  death,  when  Eadbert  made  himself  lord 
of  Picts  and  Scots,  and  was  attended  by  his  Pictish  vassal- 
king,  Unnust  or  Angus,  when  he  received  the  submission 
of  the  capital  of  Strathclyde  ^.  This  was  seventy-one 
years  after  the  overthrow  of  Egfrid's  host.  Many  of  his 
followers  were  made  captives,  or  had  to  flee  for  their 
lives:  and  flight  was  the  only  course  for  a  small  band 
of  nuns  whom  Cuthbert  afterwards  settled  in  an  English 
township^,  and  for  Bishop  Trumwine  and  his  monks,  who 
abandoned  Abercorn,  and  with  it  their  hopes  of  mission- 

^  See  Wilson,  Prehistoric  Ann.  of  Scotl.  ii.  180 ;  Burton,  Hist.  Scotl.  i. 
282 ;  Robertson,  Scotl.  under  Early  Kings,  i.  12.  Nennius  says,  the 
English  never  again  took  tribute  from  the  Picts. 

'^  Bede,  iv.  26  :  'Ex  quo  tempore  spes  coepit  et  virtus  regni  Anglorum 
fluere,  ac  retro  sublapsa  referri'  (Aen.  ii.  169).  Cp.  Bede,  ii.  12  (Aen.  iv. 
2),  ii.  13  (Aen.  ii.  502),  and  de  Temp.  Rat.  7  (Aen.  ii.  250). 

^  We  may  infer  as  much  from  the  break-up  of  the  establishment  at 
Abercorn,  and  the  peril  and  confusion  which  spread  south  of  the  Firth. 
Bede's  sentence,  '  Nam  et  Picti  terram,'  &c.,  clearly  means  that  *  the 
Picts  regained  their  land  which  the  English  had  held,  and  the  Scots  in 
Britain  and  some  of  the  British  regained  freedom,  i.  e.  independence, — 
the  Scots  being  those  of  Dalriada,  and  the  'Britons'  being  those  of 
Strathclyde.     See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  3,  5,  and  above,  p.  29, 

*  Rhys  says,  not  the  Picts  of  Galloway  ;  Celt.  Brit.  p.  149. 

^  I.  e.  of  Alcluid  or  Dunbarton ;  Sim.  Dunelm.  de  Gest.  Reg.  42.  See 
Palgrave,  pp.  437,  470  ;  Robertson,  i.  18.  Before  this,  the  Northumbrians 
had  been  strong  enough  to  re-establish,  in  an  English  form,  St.  Ninian's 
see  of  Whithern  ;  Bede,  v.  23 ;  cp.  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  7,  Skene,  i. 
271,  ii.  224. 

«  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  30. 


Aldfrtdy  King  of  Northumbria.         379 

work  in  '  Pictland.'  '  He  commended  them  to  his  friends  chap.  xi. 
in  different  monasteries,  wherever  he  best  could;  and  he 
chose  his  own  abode '  in  the  great  house  of  Whitby,  where, 
'with  a  few  of  his  companions,  he  spent  many  years  in 
monastic  strictness,  leading  a  life  useful  not  to  himself 
only,  but  to  many  others  ^'  The  corpse  of  the  self-willed 
king  received  honourable  burial  in  Hy^  at  the  hands 
of  Abbot  Adamnan,  the  biographer  of  St.  Columba  ^,  who 
would  remember  how  Egfrid's  saintly  uncle  had  sent  to 
the  island  community  for  a  bishop.  Egfrid's  widow  was 
driven  by  the  shock  of  her  bereavement  into  monastic 
life,  and  Eddi  accordingly  describes  her  as  having  been 
changed  from  a  'Jezebel  into  a  perfect  abbess,  from  a 
she-wolf  into  a  lamb"*.' 

The  anticipations   of   Cuthbert   were   fulfilled.     Egfrid,  Aldfrid 
says   Bede,  '  had   neither   sons  nor   brothers.'      His  elder  j^jng 
brother,  Alchfrid,  whom  their  father  Oswy  had  disinherited,  ^^  North- 

'  ,  ''  umbna. 

was  now  dead :  but  Aldfrid,  supposed  to  be  a  natural  son 
of  Oswy  ^  was  called  to  the  vacant  throne.  He  had  been 
living  as  a  recluse  student  in  the  '  islands '  or  '  regions  of 
the  Scots,' — as  Bede  expresses  it  ^ ;  a  phrase  which  would 
include,  with  Ireland  itself,  some  of  the  smaller  isles 
occupied  by  men  of  Irish  race,  and  known  as  seats  of  learn- 
ing and  piety  '^.     Bede  calls  him  a  man  ^  most  learned  in  the 


^  Bede,  iv.  26  :  *  Eosque  ubicunque  poterat,'  &c. 

^  Sim.  Dunelm.,  Dun.  Eccl.  i.  9.     See  Keeves's  Adamnan,  p.  232. 

^  Adamnan  was  born  about  624,  became  abbot  in  679,  and  died  in  704 
or  705.     See  Reeves,  pp.  xl,  xliv,  Ivii ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  135,  iii.  229. 

*  Eddi,  24. 

^  Bede,  iv.  26 :  '  Qui  frater  ejus,  et  filius  Osuiu  regis,  esse  dicebatur.' 
De  Mirac.  S.  Cuthb.  21  : — 

'  Et  nothus  in  regni  frater  successit  honorem.' 
And  so,  Vit.  Cuthb.  24 :  *  Ferebatur  filius  fuisse  patris  illius  .  .  .  frater  ejus 
nothus.' 

«  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  24  ;  De  Mirac.  S.  Cuthb.  21.  The  Irish  said  that 
Aldfrid's  mother  was  Fina,  or  Fiona,  a  princess  of  Meath,  and  called  him 
Flann  Fina  ;  Tighernach,  a.  704  ;  Inisfallen  Ann.  Bede  says  that  a  love 
of  sacred  learning  was  the  cause  of  his  sojourn  among  the  Irish.  Malmes- 
bury,  Gest.  Reg.  i.  3,  says  confidently  that  a  party  of  nobles  having 
deemed  Aldfrid,  though  the  elder  son,  unworthy  to  reign,  he  retired  to 
Ireland. 

^  So  Lanigan,  iii.  96.    Among  these  island-sanctuaries  were  Arranmore 


380  Cuthbert's  episcopate, 

CHAP.  XI.  Scriptures  and  in  knowledge  of  all  sorts  ^ ' :  and  tells  us 
that  he  agreed  with  Benedict  Biscop  to  give  him  eight 
hydes  of  land  for  the  monastery  of  Jarrow,  in  exchange 
for  a  splendid  manuscript  of  'The  Cosmographers,'  which 
Benedict  had  bought  in  Kome  ^.  We  know  that  Adamnan 
himself  calls  him  his  'friend/  and  visited  him  in  686  in 
order  to  regain  the  sixty  Irish  captives  carried  away  by 
Bert, — all  of  whom  were  given  up  by  Aldfrid  ^ :  and  that, 
two  years  later,  he  received  a  second  visit  from  Adamnan, 
accepted  from  him  the  work  '  On  the  Holy  Places/  which 
he  had  compiled  from  the  accounts  of  the  pilgrim-bishop 
Arculf,  and  with  royal  munificence  distributed  copies  of  it 
to  men  of  lower  degree  *.  He  repeatedly  listened  to  Dry- 
thelm's  account  of  his  '  visions '  of  the  unseen  world,  and 
procured  his  admission  into  the  monastery  of  Melrose'^. 
Aldfrid  seems  also  to  have  had  a  taste  for  rich  attire ;  for 
we  find  him,  '  in  conjunction  with  his  counsellors/  buying 
of  Benedict  Biscop  '  two  cloaks,  all  of  silk,  and  of  exquisite 
workmanship,'  for  an  estate  of  three  hydes  on  the  south 

(*  Isles  of  Saints'),  in  Galway  Bay,  Inisboffin,  Iniscattery  in  the  mouth  of 
the  Shannon,  &c.  But  the  Anon.  Vit.  Cuthb.  says  that  Aldfrid  was  then 
at  Hy,  b.  3. 

^  Bede,  iv.  26  ;  v.  12.  He  was,  in  effect,  called  '  The  Wise.'  Aldhelm 
inscribes  one  of  his  works  to  him  under  the  name  of  Acircius,  after 
a  friendship  of  twenty  years  (Lib.  de  Septenario).  See  Green,  Making  of 
Engl.  p.  397. 

^  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  12.  Aldfrid's  grant  of  land  was  'near  the  river 
Fresh.'  Benedict  had  'settled  the  terms'  of  this  purchase,  but  he  died 
before  it  could  be  carried  out  :  it  was  Ceolfrid  who  placed  the  coveted 
manuscript  in  the  hands  of  the  scholar-king. 

^  See  Vit.  Col.  ii.  46,  and  Reeves,  pp.  xlv,  187  ;  Lanigan,  iii.  96  ;  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  ii.  109.  Tighernach  dates  this  (captivos  reduxit)  in  687  ; 
Ulster  Ann.  rightly,  in  686.     See  Skene,  ii.  171. 

*  On  this  *  legatio '  see  Bede,  v.  15.  One  of  these  copies  was  used  by 
Bede.  His  own  *  De  Locis  Sanctis '  is  an  epitome.  It  was  during  this 
second  visit  that  Adamnan  became  a  convert  to  '  Catholic  *  usages,  Bede,  v. 
15,  21.  Ceolfrid  was  edified  by  his  behaviour'  at  Wearmouth,  but 
remonstrated  with  him  on  his  incomplete  semicircular  '  Simoniacal ' 
tonsure.  He  excused  himself :  *  If  I  follow  my  country's  fashion, 
I  detest  the  simoniacal  faithlessness,  and  desire  to  follow  the  chief  of 
apostles.'  *  If  so,'  rejoined  Ceolfrid,  '  show  it  by  wearing  what  he  wore  ! ' 
The  argument  was  quite  gravely  put,  and  it  told. 

^  Bede,  v.  12  :  '  Narrabat  autem,'  &c.  Drythelm  was  supposed  to  have 
actually  died  and  returned  to  life. 


Cuthbert's  episcopate.  381 

bank  of  the   Wear, — a  purchase   effected  soon   after  his  chap.  xi. 
accession  ^     This  prince,  the  first  of  our  literary  kings,  was 
a  man  of  practical  vigour,  and  well  able  to  '  restore,  though 
within  narrower  limits,  the  humbled  state  of  the  realm  ^/ 

The  northern  part  of  that  realm,  on  which  the  blow  fell  Cuthbert 
heaviest,  might  well  seem  to  have  received  in  its  necessity  ^"  ^^^' 
an  opportune  gift  in  the  ministry  of  such  a  bishop  as  Cuth- 
bert, 'great  in  his  humility,  glorious  in  the  reality  of  his 
faith  and  the  ardour  of  his  charity  ^.'  His  personal  habits  of 
asceticism  were  unaltered  :  he  '  continued  steadfastly,'  says 
his  anonymous  biographer,  'to  be  the  same  man  that  he  had 
been  before  ^,'  with  the  same  lowliness  of  heart,  the  same  in- 
tensity of  devotion.  His  voice  while  celebrating  was  still 
low,  still  broken  by  tears ;  the  grace  of  '  compunction,'  as 
Bede  calls  it,  'kept  his  mind  fixed  on  things  heavenly;  above 
all  things  there  glowed  within  him  the  fire  of  Divine  love  ^.' 
His  tenacious  memory  '  supplied  the  place  of  books  ^ ';  the 
canons  of  the  Church,  the  lives  of  the  Saints,  were  habit- 
ually present  to  his  mind.  As  a  preacher  he  was  '  clear 
and  plain,  full  of  dignity  and  of  gentleness  ;  he  used  to 
dwell  on  the  providential  ofiice  of  the  law  '^,'  the  doctrines 
of  the  Gospel,  the  obligations  of  the  Christian  life ;  '  address- 
ing to  different  minds  the  exhortations  which  they  severally 
needed^,  as  knowing  beforehand  what  to  say,  and  to  whom, 
and  when,  and  how  to  say  it.'  He  had,  says  Bede  with 
characteristic  emphasis,  '  that  qualification  which  is  above 
all  others  helpful  to  a  teacher,  for  whenever  he  bade  any 

^  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  8:  '■  duo  pallia  holoserica.' 

^  Bede,  iv.  26  :   '  destructumque  regni  statum,'  &c. 

^  Chr.  Remembr.,  Jan.  1852,  p.  78. 

*  '  Idem  etiam  constantissime  perseverat,  qui  piius  fuerat  ;  *  Anon. 
Vit.  b.  4.     See  above,  p.  301.     He  still  retained  his  ordinary  plain  dress. 

'  Bede,  iv.  28.  '  The  holy  corporaa;  cloth,  wherewith  he  covered  the 
chalice  when  he  used  to  say  mass,'  was  presei-ved,  and  long  afterwards 
inserted  into  the  banner  which  hung  over  his  shrine.  This  corporal  was 
actually  displayed  on  the  top  of  a  spear,  at  the  battle  of  Neville's-cross,  in 
1346.     Etheldred  was  said  to  have  given  Cuthbert  some  vestments. 

•^  Anon.  Vit.  ''  'Ministerio  legis,'  ib. 

*  *  Unumquemque  diversa  admonens  exhortatione,'  ib.  Bede's  '  Life  * 
tells  us  how  on  one  occasion,  while  prior  of  Melrose,  he  urged  his  hearers 
to  be  'attentive  and  watchful  while  the  mysteries  of  the  heavenly 
kingdom  were  being  preached ' ;  c.  13.    Cp.  Bede,  Horn.  33. 


382  Cuthbert's  visitations. 

CHAP.  XI.  person  to  do  a  thing,  he  showed  the  way  by  doing  it  him- 
self^.* Always  genial  and  friendlike  to  all  who  came  to 
pour  out  to  him  their  troubles,  as  he  had  been  during  his 
hermit-life,  he  ' deemed' — the  words  are  very  memorable — 
*  that  to  advise  and  comfort  the  weak  was  equivalent  to  an 
act  of  prayer 2/  for  he  had  in  full  measure  'that  most 
excellent  gift  of  charity,  without  which,'  says  the  anony- 
mous writer  in  words  which  anticipate  our  Quinquagesima 
collect,  'all  virtue  is  nothing^.'  But  in  these  private 
interviews  he  was  strict  in  '  recalling  to  godly  sorrow  all 
who  indulged  in  any  unholy  joy  *.'  It  need  not  be  said 
that  he  exhibited  all  active  beneficence,  giving  food  to  the 
hungry  and  clothes  to  those  who  were  shivering  with  cold ; 
welcoming  strangers,  ransoming  captives — doubtless  out  of 
the  hands  of  the  Picts, — protecting  widows  and  orphans, 
rescuing  the  poor  from  the  oppressor^,  and  showing  how 
little  his  habits  as  a  recluse  had  unfitted  him  for  the  work 
of  a  bishop  in  the  face  of  the  world.  He  went  about  his 
diocese  with  the  energy  of  a  younger  man,  reviving,  doubt- 
less, many  of  his  old  remembrances  while  he  traversed  the 
wild  moor  or  penetrated  the  outlying  glen.  In  one  wood- 
land place  the  inhabitants  of  neighbouring  hamlets  had 
assembled  to  receive  confirmation  at  his  hands,  had  spread 
tents,  in  default  of  a  church,  for  the  bishop  and  his  clergy, 
and  cut  down  boughs  of  trees  for  their  own  shelter  ^.  For 
two  days  they  all  remained  on  the  spot,  until  Cuthbert  had 
finished  his  ministrations  '^.     It  was  told  afterwards  that  on 

^  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  26  ;  iv.  28,  '  Et  quod  maxime  doctores  juvare  solet,' 
&c.  See  above,  p.  56.  Comp.  Vit.  S.  Sturmi,  14:  'In  omni  disciplina 
,  .  .  prius  semetipsum  exercere  curavit.' 

"^  Bede,  iv.  28  :  '  Hoc  ipsum  quoque  orationis  loco  ducens,'  &c. 

^  Anon.  Vit.  :  *  Et  illam  supereminentem  caritatem,  sine  qua  cmnis 
virtus  nihil  est.'  Comp.  Eddi,  11,  copying  this,  and  applying  it  (some- 
what boldly)  to  Wilfrid. 

*  '  Male  gaudentes,'  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  26. 

'  Comp.  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  iv.  26 ;  Anon.  Vit. 

*  Comp.  Willib.  Vit.  S.  Bonifac.  s.  36 :  '■  Suorum  tantum  stipatus  clien- 
tum  numero,  erexit  tentoria.'  The  confirmands  had  been  recently 
baptized. 

'  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  32.  The  Anon.  Vit.  says  that  this  was  while  he  was 
going  from  Hexham  to  *  Vel.'  But  he  had  no  episcopal  relations  to 
Hexham.     Perhaps  he  had  been  on  a  visit  to  Eata. 


Cuthbert^s  visitations,  383 

this  very  occasion  some  women  carried '  a  youth  wasted  <^hap.  xi. 
with  illness,  on  a  rude  pallet,  to  the  entrance  of  the  wood, 
and  Cuthbert,  being  asked  to  bestow  his  blessing,  caused 
him  to  be  brought  near,  prayed  over  him,  and  blessed  him, 
— whereupon  the  lad  arose,  took  food,  thanked  God,  and 
returned  to  the  women  who  were  waiting  for  him.  The 
pestilence  had  nearly  depopulated  some  parts  of  the 
country ;  Cuthbert  did  his  best  to  console  the  survivors, 
and  in  one  place  on  asking  whether  there  were  any  one  else 
whom  he  could  visit,  had  his  attention  directed  to  a  poor 
woman  who  was  weeping  bitterly  ;  she  had  lost  one  son, 
and  held  in  her  arms  another  who  seemed  to  be  dying. 
Cuthbert  went  up  to  her,  kissed  and  blessed  the  boy,  and 
assured  the  mother  that  he  would  recover,  and  that  no  one 
else  of  her  household  would  die  of  the  plague.  He  did 
recover,  and  long  afterwards  with  his  mother  bore  witness 
to  the  fulfilment  of  the  prediction  2.  Cuthbert  made 
another  journey  to  Carlisle,  partly  to  ordain  priests,  and 
partly  to  give  the  monastic  habit  to  Ermenburga  and  to 
other  women, — and  also,  if  we  may  trust  a  later  writer, 
to  establish  schools  ^.  It  was  then  that  his  dear  friend 
Herbert,  the  hermit-priest  of  Derwentwater,  came  to  meet 
him,  and  asked  him  to  pray  that  they  might  both  die  at 
the  same  time,  which,  we  are  told,  came  to  pass  *.  This 
visit  took  place  in  686,  when  Cuthbert  was  looking  forward 
to  his  end,  which,  he  felt  sure,  could  not  be  far  ofF^  :  it  is 
probable  that  his  excessive  austerities  had  prematurely 
worn  out  his  once  robust  frame,  and  entailed  a  propor- 

*  *  In  grabato  ;  *  Bede,  1.  c.  ;  Anon.  Vit, 

'  Bede,  Vit.  Cutlib.  33.  The  author  of  the  Anon.  Vit.  says  that  this 
story  was  told  him  by  Tidi,  the  presbyter  to  whom  Cuthbert  put  the 
question,  and  that  the  place  was  'Medllpong.'  The  plague-struck  boy 
was  '  swollen  all  over.'     Cp.  Adamn.  ii.  46. 

3  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  28  ;  Hist.  S.  Cuthb.,  X  Script.  69. 

*  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  28,  iv.  29  ;  see  Wordswoiih's  *  Inscriptions,'  No.  xv, 
*  for  the  spot  where  the  hermitage  stood  on  St.  Herbert's  island,  Derwent- 
water :  * 

* .  .  .  Though  here  the  hermit  numbered  his  last  day 
Far  from  St.  Cuthbert  his  beloved  friend, 
Those  holy  men  both  died  in  the  same  hour.* 
'  *  Divino  admonitus  oraculo  ; '  Bede,  iv.  28  ;  so  Vit.  Cuthb.  35. 


384 


Ciithbert  returns  to  Fame, 


Cuthbert 
retires  to 
Fame. 


CHAP.  XI.  tionate  loss  upon  his  Church.  Id  order  to  prepare  for  the 
last  hour  by  an  interval  of  undisturbed  devotion  \  he 
resolved  to  return  to  Fame,  to  '  devote  himself,  undisturbed, 
to  prayer  and  psalmody,'  and  to  '  bum  away  the  thorns  of 
worldly  care^.'  He  made  one  farewell  circuit  of  the 
diocese,  visiting  the  dwellings  of  the  faithful,  and  giving 
them  needful  exhortations.  He  also  went  to  see  Elfled  at 
one  of  the  dependencies  of  her  convent,  and,  although  it 
was  not  in  his  diocese,  consecrated  a  newly-finished  church. 
It  is  specially  said  of  him,  on  this  occasion,  that  he  was 
physically  wearied  by  his  functions, — but  also  that  he 
retained  his  playful  humour  ^.  We  also  find  him  at  '  the 
mouth  of  the  Tyne,'  where  the  abbess  Verca  entertained 
him  ^  magnificently  *.'  It  was  almost  immediately  after 
the  Christmas  of  686  that  he  returned  to  his  solitary  islet ; 
and  at  the  end  of  February  his  last  illness  came  on. 
Herefrid,  abbot  of  Lindisfarne  ^  —  who  was  probably 
appointed  to  the  office  when  Cuthbert  ceased  to  reside 
there, — had  been  visiting  the  bishop  for  three  days  ^ ;  on 


^  A  sample  of  the  morbid  pietism  fostered  by  the  monastic  spirit  is  in 
the  Anonymous  Life,  where  Cuthbert's  retirement  from  episcopal  work  is 
described  as  a  *  forsaking  of  secular  honour'  (Op.  vi.  379  ;  comp.  Alcuin,  de 
Pontif.  Ebor.  673).  Yet  Cuthbert's  object,  apart  from  the  means  which 
he  took  to  attain  it,  was  the  same  which  bishop  Zachary  Pearce  of 
Rochester  had  in  view,  when  he  vainly  sought  permission  to  resign  his 
see  in  1763.  Some  pious  bishops  before  Cuthbert's  time,  as  Dubricius, 
Magloire  of  Dol,  and  Arnulf  of  Metz,  had  resigned  their  sees  in  advanced 
life  for  the  sake  of  religious  retirement,  and  Licinius  of  Angers  had  been 
restrained  by  his  colleagues  from  doing  so  :  but  Cuthbert,  to  the  last,  was 
regarded  as  bishop  of  Lindisfarne. 

2  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  34,  36.     The  allusion,  of  course,  is  to  Matt.  xiii.  22. 

^  lb.  34.  He  is  at  table,  a  good  deal  tired  ;  his  face  changes  colour,  his 
knife  drops  on  the  board.  Elfled  asks  him  what  he  has  seen.  He  tries  to 
turn  it  off :  *  Did  you  think  I  could  go  on  eating  all  day  ?  I  was  bound 
to  leave  off  some  time.'  Then  comes  an  instance  of  a  vision  coincident 
with  the  death  of  a  lay- brother,  Hadwald. 

*  lb.  35.  After  rising  from  his  noonday  repose,  he  said  he  was  thirsty, 
and  asked  for  drink.  They  asked  whether  he  would  have  wine  or  beer  : 
he  chose  water  ;  then  comes  a  story  of  the  water  being  afterwards  found 
to  taste  like  very  good  wine.  In  Raine's  St.  Cuthbert,  p.  16,  her  monastery 
is  placed  at  Tiningham,  on  the  Scottish  *  Tine,'  north  of  Dunbar.  But 
the  'Tina'  of  Bede,  v.  21,  is  the  'Tyne.'     See  p.  187. 

5  See  Vit.  Cuthb.  praef.  and  c.  8,  23. 

*  lb.  37.     Other  monks  were  with  him. 


His  last  days,  385 

a  Thursday  morning  he  gave  the  usual  signal  of  his  chap.  xr. 
presence  near  the  cell,  and  Cuthbert  came  to  the  window, 
received  his  greeting  in  silence  with  a  '  sigh/  and  on  being 
asked  whether  his  indisposition — an  old  familiar  ailment — 
had  come  upon  him  in  the  night,  replied  quietly,  'Yes, 
I  have  been  ill  ^.'  '  Give  us  your  blessing,'  said  Herefrid ; 
'  it  is  time  to  put  to  sea.'  Cuthbert  bade  him  go,  but  added 
precise  instructions  as  to  his  own  burial  ^.  Herefrid  asked 
whether  some  of  the  monks  who  had  accompanied  him 
from  Lindisfarne  might  not  stay  behind  to  take  care  of  the 
bishop  ^.  Cuthbert  refused  to  allow  it :  they  departed,  and 
the  wild  winds  of  the  first  week  of  March  prevented  them 
for  five  days  from  revisiting  Fame  ^.  When  they  could  do 
so,  they  saw  a  sad  sight.  In  the  hospice,  instead  of  in  his 
cell,  they  found  Cuthbert  sitting  on  a  couch,  his  face 
ghastly  with  exhaustion.  Herefrid  warmed  some  wine 
which  he  had  brought,  induced  him  to  taste  it,  applied 
warm  water  to  his  foot,  which  had  a  bad  ulcer  of  long 
standing ;  and  then  sat  down  beside  him,  and  uttered  some 
words  of  sympathy.  '  Lord  bishop,  I  see  you  have  suffered 
much :  why  did  you  forbid  any  one  to  attend  upon  you  ? ' 
'It  was  God's  will,'  said  Cuthbert  simply,  'that  I  should 
suffer  some  distress  without  human  help  at  hand.  I  became 
worse  as  soon  as  you  had  departed ;  and  so  I  left  my  cell  in 
order  that  any  of  you,  when  coming  to  see  me,  might  find 
me  here ;  and  here  for  five  days  and  nights  I  have  con- 
tinued without  moving.'  Turning  up  his  couch,  he  showed 
five  onions,  one  of  them  nearly  half  eaten:    he  had   had 

^  '  Etiam,  languor  me  tetigit  nocte  hac'  Cp.  *  Etiam  '  in  Bede,  v.  6,  9. 
The  '  ailment '  was  an  internal  pain,  the  result  of  an  attack  of  the  pesti- 
lence ;  Vit.  Cuthb.  8. 

'^  His  body  was  to  be  wrapt  in  linen,  which  had  been  sent  by  abbess 
Verca :  he  would  not  wear  it  while  alive,  but  had  kept  it  for  his  shroud. 
A  '  sarcophagus '  given  by  abbot  Cudda  would  be  found  under  the  turf, 
north  of  the  oratory :  he  was  to  be  buried  in  it,  &c.  On  the  use  of  the 
'sindon'  or  linen  shroud,  compare  Bede,  iv.  9,  and  the  account  of 
Wilfrid's  burial,  Eddi,  65,  and  of  Columba's,  Adamn.  iii  23.  St.  Boniface 
gave  special  directions  about  the  'linteum '  which  was  to  be  his  shroud  ; 
Willib.  Vit.  Bonif.  s.  33.     On  Etheldred's  '  locellus '  see  p.  289. 

^  Several  of  the  Lindisfarne  monks  were  '  skilful  physicians ' ;  Bede, 
Vit.  Cuthb.  45,  cp.  37  ;  so  Anon.  Vit.  in  Bed.  Op.  vi.  381.   Cp.  Bede,  iv.  19. 

*  Cp.  Bede,  v.  i,  for  a  vivid  picture  of  a  storm  on  the  sea  near  Fame. 

C  C 


386  Cuthbert's  last  days. 

CHAP.  XI.  nothing  else  ^.  He  dropped  some  mysterious  allusions  to 
the  attack  of  ghostly  enemies  ^.  Heref  rid  durst  not  say 
more  than  '  Will  you  not  now  have  some  attendants  ? '  He 
consented  ;  some  of  the  monks  who  had  had  occasion  to  go 
over  to  Bamborough,  and  had  returned,  were  appointed  to 
nurse  him  ;  among  them  were  '  Bede  the  elder,'  who  had 
always  attended  on  his  person,  and  Walstod,  who,  though 
himself  suffering  from  ailment,  was  deemed  specially  fit  to 
hear  his  last  words.  Herefrid  came  and  went ;  and,  after 
consulting  with  the  community,  reported  to  Cuthbert  their 
earnest  wish  to  bury  him  in  Lindisfarne.  He  answered, 
with  a  strange  disparagement  of  his  '  active  life,'  that  he 
had  wished  to  rest  on  the  islet '  where  he  had  fought  his 
poor  fight  for  the  Lord ' ;  and  he  feared  that  if  he  were  to 
be  buried  in  Lindisfarne,  the  monastery  would  be  troubled 
by  fugitives,  or  criminals  seeking  sanctuary  beside  his 
grave  ^.  At  last,  however,  he  yielded,  on  condition  that 
he  might  be  interred  in  '  the  inmost  part  of  the  church;' 
They  '  thanked  him  on  bended  knees  for  this  permission 
and  counsel,'  and  then  went  home,  but  paid  him  other 
visits.  At  last,  on  the  morning  of  Tuesday  the  19th  of 
March,  Herefrid  and  others  carried  him — for  he  was  now 
too  feeble  to  walk — back  to  his  cell.  Walstod  went  in  with 
him  * ;  no  one  else  for  years  had  done  so.  Six  hours  passed 
away  :  at  three  in  the  afternoon  Herefrid  found  him  lying 
down  in  a  corner  of  the  oratory,  opposite  to  the  altar ;  and 
sitting  down  beside  him^  begged  for  his  farewell  message 
as  a  '  legacy '  to  the  brethren  ^.  Very  faintly,  and  '  at 
intervals,'  the  voice  which  had  held  such  sway  over  its 
hearers    uttered    a    few    sentences     inculcating    '  Divine 

^  '  As  often  as  my  mouth  became  very  dry  and  parched,  haec  gustando 
me  refrigerare  ac  recreare  curavi.' 

2  He  had  never,  he  said,  been  so  much  *  persecuted'  as  in  those  five  days. 

'  On  the  privilege  of  sanctuary,  see  above,  p.  103, 

*  They  asked  him  to  let  one  of  them  go  in  to  wait  on  him.  He  gazed 
round  on  all,  and  fixed  his  eyes  on  the  invalid  brother,  saying,  'Let 
Walstod  come  in  with  me  ; '  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  38.  It  is  added  that, 
from  that  moment,  Walstod  (Pallistod,  Anon.  Vit.)  was  free  of  his 
infirmity. 

'  'Quern  haereditarium  sermonem,  quod  ultimum  "Vale,"  fratribus 
relinqueret ; '  V.  C.  39. 


I 


Death  of  Cuthbert,  387 

charity/  unanimity,  agreement  with  '  other  servants  of  chap.  xt. 
Christ,'  hospitality  to  strangers,  avoidance  of  self-righteous- 
ness, strictness  in  abstaining  from  communion  with  those 
who  'swerved  from  Catholic  unity,  either  by  observing 
Easter  out  of  its  time,  or  by  living  perversely.'  '  Remember 
that  I  had  rather  you  took  up  my  bones,  and  left  your 
home  to  dwell  wherever  God  may  provide,  than  put  a  yoke 
on  your  own  necks  by  consenting  to  schismatics  in  their 
iniquity  ^ ! '  They  were  to  study  and  observe  the  rules  of 
the  monastic  fathers,  and  those  which  they  had  received 
through  his  ministry:  'for  I  know  that  although  in  my 
lifetime  some  have  despised  me  ^,  after  my  death  it  will  be 
seen  that  my  teaching  is  not  to  be  despised/  So,  according  , 
to  Bede,  the  abbot  reported  these  last  words  of  Cuthbert : 
but  doubtless  he  received  them  with  some  amplification  of 
the  original  ^.  Cuthbert  passed  the  evening  in  '  tranquil  Death  of 
expectation  of  future  bliss,'  and  continued  his  prayers  until 
past  midnight.  Then,  'when  the  usual  time  of  nocturn- 
prayer  was  come,'  he  received  from  Herefrid  'the  com- 
munion of  the  Lord's  Body  and  Blood,  to  strengthen  him 
for  his  departure:  and  with  eyes  and  hands  lifted  up 
heavenward^  he  commended  his  soul  to  the  Lord,  in 
a  sitting  posture,  and  passed  away,  without  a  groan,  into 
the  life  of  the  fathers  ^,'  in  the  first  hours  of  Wednesday, 

^  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  39.  It  would  seem  from  this  that  there  was  some 
remnant  of  a  Scotic  party  still  existing  in  Northumbria.  The  words,  it  is 
said,  were  remembered  by  bishop  Eardulf  when  he  resolved  on  removing 
the  body  ;  Hist.  Transl.  S.  Cuthb.  c.  2  (Bed.  Op.  vi.  36) ;  Sim.  Dun.  de 
Dun.  Eccl.  ii.  6.     There  was  clearly  a  'hard'  vein  in  Cuthbert. 

2  Probably  an  allusion  to  those  in  Northumbria  whose  ideal  of  ecclesi- 
astical excellence  was  Wilfrid.  ~   ^  *  Haec  et  his  similia.' 

*  It  is  certain  that  he  received  Communion  in  both  kinds,  and  clearly 
not  during  mass.     So  Bede,  V.  C.  39,  and  de  Mirac.  S.  Cuthb.  c.  36  : 

*  Residens  antistes  ad  altar' 
Pocula  degustat  vitae,  Cliristique  supinum 
Sanguine  munit  iter.' 
So  Guthlac  '  munivit  se  communione  corporis  et  sanguinis  Christi,'  both 
kinds  being  kept   ready  on   the   altar ;    Act.  SS.  Bened.   iii.  281.     For 
another  usage  see  p.  347. 

^  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  39  ;  Anon.  Vit.  Cp,  Bede,  iv.  28  :  *  mortis,  vel  vitae 
magis,'  &c.  He  was  probably  only  about  fifty-six,  for  he  was  just  grown 
up  when  he  came  to  Melrose  in  651.     See  above,  p.  214. 

OC  iZ 


388  Death  of  Cuthbert. 

CHAP.  XL  the  20th  of  March,  687.  The  corpse  was  carried  to  Lindis- 
farne,  duly  washed  ^,  and  arrayed  in  priestly  vestments 
and  shoes  ;  the  head  was  wrapped  in  a  handkerchief ; 
'  oblates/  or  bread,  as  if  prepared  for  the  Eucharist  ■^,  were 
placed  upon  the  breast,  and  a  linen  sheet  ^,  rubbed  with 
wax,  was  folded  round  the  body,  which  was  then  laid  in 
a  stone  coffin  on  the  right  hand  of  the  altar  in  St.  Peter's 
church, — there  to  remain  (although  in  698  removed  into 
a  new  oaken  coffin)  until  the  terror  of  the  Northmen's 
invasion  impelled  the  monks  of  Lindisfarne,  in  875,  to 
begin  that  series  of  '  the  wanderings  of  St.  Cuthbert '  which 
ended,  in  999,  with  his  final  interment 

'Where  his  cathedral,  huge  and  vast, 
Looks  down  upon  the  Wear*.' 

So  lived,  so  died,  the  great  popular  saint  of  the  North- 
country  ^.  It  is  next  to  impossible  to  abridge  the  story  of 
his  death ;  and  as  in  the  case  of  St.  Chad,  it  has  seemed 
desirable  to  preserve  unbroken  the  continuity  of  his  last  two 

^  Anon.  Vit.  :  *  Toto  corpore  lavato,  capite  sudario  circumdato,'  &c. 

2  '  Offletes  ; '  see  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  292. 

'  When  the  inner  coffin  of  Cuthbert  (that  of  698)  was  opened  at  Durham 
in  1 104,  he  was  found  wrapped  in  a  'sindon  subtilissima,'  with  face-cloth, 
'sudarium,'  vestments,  '  pallia,'  and  three  sheets  (Reginald,  Libellus,  c.  40). 
At  the  destruction  of  the  shrine  in  1538,  what  seemed  to  be  an  '  entire 
body'  was  reinterred  beneath  it.  At  the  examination  of  the  grave  in 
1827  three  coffins  were  found,  the  inmost  being  that  of  698,  which  held 
a  skeleton  wrapped  in  five  silken  robes,  with  a  skull,  doubtless  St. 
Oswald's. 

*  'Marmion,'  ii.  14.     See  Hist.  Transl.  S.  C.  c.  2,  in  Bed.  Op.  vi.  387. 

^  Bede's  Life  of  Cuthbert  was  written  after  very  careful  investigation  and 
*  accurate  examination  '  of  surviving  eye-witnesses.  When  finished,  it  was 
submitted  to  the  criticism  of  Herefrid  and  others ;  and,  thus  amended, 
was  presented  to  the  bishops  and  monks  of  Lindisfarne,  and  read  during 
two  days  by  the  elders  of  the  community,  who  found  nothing  to  correct, 
but  mentioned  to  Bede  *  alia  multa,  nee  minora  his  quae  scripsimus.' 
These  incidents,  however,  he  refrained  from  inserting  in  his  book ; 
Praef.  V.  C.  The  anonymous  Life,  written  earlier,  during  Aldfrid's  reign, 
has  very  little  about  Cuthbert's  death.  Bede  devotes  a  chapter,  v,  i,  to 
his  successor  in  the  hermit  life,  Ethelwald,  a  priest  bred  up  at  Ripon, 
who  dwelt  on  Fame  for  twelve  years,  and  died  in  699.  The  third  occupant 
of  Fame  was  Felgeld,  who  lived  there  many  years ;  Vit.  Cuthb.  46. 
Tokens  of  the  widespread  reverence  for  Cuthbert's  memory  are  found  in 
dedication  of  churches,  not  only  throughout  his  own  Northumbria,  and 
at  Carlisle,  or  in  Scottish  towns  like  Kirkcudbright  (*  bright '  =  *  bert ') 
and  Edinburgh,  but  at  Wells,  and  at  Cubert  in  Cornwall. 


Sigfrid  succeeds  Easterwine,  389 

years.    But  we  must  now  again  take  up  the  thread  of  events  chap.  xi. 
preceding  the  year  687. 

Benedict  Biscop  had  made  a  sixth  and  last  journey  to  Easter- 
Rome  in  684  ^  The  kindly  and  single-hearted  Easterwine  ^ear^ 
had  been  appointed  by  him  coadjutor- abbot  of  Wearmouth  mouth, 
in  the  ninth  year  from  its  foundation — i.  e.  in  682  ^.  *  When 
thus  made  a  ruler/  according  to  the  advice  of  '  the  Wise 
ManV  he  'did  not  lift  himself  up':  he  still  shared  the 
common  meals,  and  slept  in  the  common  dormitory:  he 
was  as  ready  as  ever  to  take  part  in  manual  work  with  the 
monks,  to  handle  plough  or  hammer  or  winnowing-fan. 
If  he  had  to  rebuke,  he  did  not  shrink  from  his  duty :  but 
*  from  his  inborn  affectionateness  he  preferred  to  admonish 
his  brethren  not  to  do  wrong,' — an  admonition  the  more 
telling  because  it  was  felt  that  to  break  rule  was  to  sadden 
the  bright  face  of  the  good  abbot  *.  His  death,  caused  by 
the  pestilence,  partook  of  his  life's  serenity.  He  was  ill 
for  just  a  week,  but  did  not  remove  into  a  private  sleeping- 
room  until  the  third  day :  on  the  seventh  he  came  out,  sat 
down  in  the  open  air,  sent  for  all  the  monks,  and  '  in  his 
loving  fashion  ^ '  gave  to  each  the  kiss  of  peace,  while  they 
were  weeping  and  mourning  for  the  loss  of  '  such  a  father.' 
He  died  in  the  course  of  the  next  night,  March  7,  686, 
aged  only  thirty-six,  and  having  spent  twelve  years  in  the 
monastery. 

Benedict  had  not  yet  returned.     When  he  arrived   at  Ceolfrid 
Wearmouth,   he   found  ^   that   Sigfrid    had   been    elected,  ^" 
according  to  the  right  of  choice  secured  to  the  community"^, 
to  succeed  Easterwine.     At  Jarrow  the  deadly  epidemic 
swept  away  '  all  who  could  read,  or  preach,  or  chant  anti- 
phons  and  responsories,  except  the  abbot  Ceolfrid  and  one 

^  See  above,  p.  217.  ^  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  6,  7. 

3  Ecclus.  xxxii.  i.  Bede  adds  that  he  was  *  mitis,  affabilis,  benignus 
omnibus.'  After  describing  him  bishop  Browne  asks,  *  How  can  we  help 
loving  those  whose  ideal  this  was  of  a  lovable  man  ? '     Lessons,  &c.,  p.  64. 

*  *  Ne  qui  peccare  vellet,  et  limpidissimam  vultus  ejus  lucem  nubilo  sibi 
suae  inquietudinis  abscondere ; '  Hist.  Abb.  7. 

^  *  More  naturae  misericordis.' 

'  Hist.  Abb.  8  :  *  Verum  inter  laeta,'  &c.  Sigfrid  seems  never  to  have 
been  ordained  priest.     Anon.  Hist.  Abb.,  *  abbas  et  diaconus.' 

'  Hist.  Abb.  9.     See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  208. 


390       Benedict's  last  return  from  Rome. 

CHAP.  XT.  little  boy,  who  had  been  bred  up  and  taught  by  him  ^/ 
In  his  distress,  the  abbot  told  his  young  companion  that 
they  would  now  go  through  the  psalmody  without  anti- 
phons  -,  at  all  the  hours  except  vespers  and  matins.  They 
did  so  for  a  week,  and  then,  after  Ceolf rid's  tears  had  often 
interrupted  the  'maimed  rite,'  resumed  the  use  of  anti- 
phons ;  and  the  services  were  thenceforward  recited  in  full 
by  the  two  voices, '  until  Ceolfrid  could  train  up  or  procure 
competent  associates  in  the  Divine  work.'  The  boy  here 
referred  to,  and  described  as  having  grown  up  to  be  a  priest 
in  the  house,  and  written  an  account  of  Ceolfrid's  adminis- 
tration, could  be  no  other  than  Bede  himself,  then  about 
thirteen  years  old^.  He  would  take  a  keen  interest  in 
Benedict's  new  store  of  gifts  from  Rome,  especially  a  series 
of  paintings  for  Jarrow,  representing  types  and  antitypes, 
which  were  ranged  on  opposite  sides  of  the  church*,  so 
that  the  scenes  of  the  journey  to  Moriah  and  of  the  Brazen 
Serpent  confronted  those  of  the  Way  of  Sorrows  and  the 
Crucifixion,  and  '  the  harmony  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments '  was  vividly  represented  to  those  who  entered  the 
church.  Other  paintings  from  the  Gospel  history  were 
hung  round  the  chapel  of  the  Virgin  in  'the  greater 
monastery'  at  Wearmouth^. 

We  cannot  but  remark  that  not  only  Benedict,  but 
Cuthbert  also,  a  typical  saint,  was  content  to  ignore  the 
claims  of  Wilfrid.  The  consecration  and  the  episcopate  of 
Cuthbert  were  totally  inconsistent  with  the  expressed  will 
of  Rome ;  yet  Cuthbert  never  seems  to  have  given  a  thought 

^  Hist.  Anon.  Abb.,  Bed.  Op.  vi.  421. 

^  See  the  Benedictine  rule,  as  to  prime,  terce,  &c. :  '  Si  major  congre- 
gatio  fuerit,  cum  antiphonis ;  si  vero  minor,  in  directum  (i.  e.  without 
interruption)  psallantur,'  c.  57.  Bede,  in  his  last  illness,  *  cantabat 
antiphonas,'  as,  '0  Rex  gloriae.'  'An  antiphon,  in  the  original  sense  of 
the  word,  was  the  intercalation  of  some  fragment  or  verse  between  the 
verses  of  the  psalms  which  were  being  then  sung^ '  cp.  Neale,  Comm.  on 
Psalms,  i.  35  ff.  A  '  double '  feast,  as  is  well  known,  means  one  in  which 
the  antiphons  are  said  entire  both  before  and  after  the  psalms.  Also 
above,  p.  334,  and  cp.  Greg.  Tur.  viii.  31,  and  the  Breviary  of  Quinones, 
ed.  Wickham,  Legg,  p.  xxi,  *  omissis  antiphonis,'  &c. 

^  See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  190. 

*  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  8  :  'Proxima  super  invicem  regione.' 

5  Bede,  1.  c. 


Cadwalla  and  Wilfrid,  391 

to  that  part  of  the  question.     Perhaps  he  assumed  what  chap.  xi. 
Northumbrian  authorities  had  thought  fit  to  assert,  that  Wilfrid 
the  decree  produced  by  Wilfrid  was  unfairly  obtained  ^.  church  of 
But,  anyhow,  the  Northumbrian  Church  went  on  its  way,  Northum- 
doing  its  work,  as  if  Wilfrid  had  never  appealed,  or  as  if 
his   appeal   was   a   nullity  I     Cuthbert   was   installed   at 
Lindisfarne;    Eata  resumed  his   throne  in  Wilfrid's  own 
Hexham;  Eadhed  appeared  as  bishop  in  his  still  dearer 
church  of  Ripon.     And  no  one  said  a  word  for  him  who 
had  once  had  all  Northumbria  at  his  feet,  and  who  was 
now  completing  in  Sussex  the  conversion  of  the  kingdoms. 
He  did  not  neglect  his  own  cause ;  he  obtained  from  Pope 
Benedict  II,  who  held  the  see  for  ten  months  from  the 
June  of  684,  a  recognition  of  his  innocence  and  his  rights  -^ ; 
and  he  procured  for  himself  the  friendship  of  a  princely 
exile  who  might  well  seem  destined  to  become  a  power, 
and  whose   story  reads   like   a   startling   romance.     This  Cadwalla 
was  Cadwalla,  the  descendant  of  a  younger  branch  of  the  ^^  Sussex. 
West-Saxon  dynasty*,  but  apparently  connected  by  blood 
with  the  British  race  ^,  and  at  this  period  leading  a  wild 
outlaw  life  amid  the  forests  of  Sussex,  in  consequence  of 
the  jealousy  of  the  West-Saxon  king  Kentwin.     Wilfrid 
befriended  him  by  gifts,  and  gained  a  certain  hold  on  his 

^  Above,  p.  337.  2  Above,  p.  325. 

'^  Eddi,  51,  'et  electo  Benedicto  ; '  ib.  52,  53,  'electus  Benedictus.' 
Probably  he  wrote  while  still  '  elect,'  as  in  a  letter  in  Mansi,  xi.  1085. 

*  He  was  the  son  of  Kenbert,  great-grandson  of  the  w^arlike  West- Saxon 
king  Ceawlin  ;  see  Sax.  Chron.,  and  Florence,  a.  685.  Malmesbury  says 
he  was  '  expelled  from  Wessex  by  a  faction  of  the  chief  men ' ;  G.  Pontif. 
iii.  102. 

^  His  name,  clearly  British,  led  the  Welsh  writers  to  claim  him  as 
a  British  king,  and  identify  him  with  Cadwalader  '  the  Blessed,*  son  of 
that  Cadwallon  who  was  slain  at  Heavenfield.  See  Brut  y  Tywysogion, 
or  Chronicle  of  Princes  of  Wales,  Mon.  Brit.  Hist.  p.  841.  So  Geoffrey- 
says  (b.  9)  that  '  Cadwalader,'  in  consequence  of  famine  and  pestilence, 
went  over  to  Armorica,  was  miraculously  forbidden  to  return,  went  to 
Rome,  and  there  died  (the  link  between  this  myth  and  the  real  history  of 
Cadwalla),  having  sent  his  son  Ivor  and  nephew  Ini  to  attack  the  English 
in  Britain,  &c.  And  see  Angl.  Sac.  ii.  p.  xxxi ;  and  Elmham,  p.  254.  See 
Rees,  Welsh  Saints,  p.  300,  on  this  confusion.  In  fact,  Cadwalader,  whom 
the  Welsh  regarded  as  a  saint,  died  of  the  plague  of  664,  Above,  p.  152. 
'It  is  pretty  certain  that  he  did  not  die  at  Rome  :'  Haddan  and  Stubbs, 
i.  202.     Cp.  Rhys,  Celt.  Brit.  p.  134. 


392  Cadwalla^  King  of  Wessex. 

CHAP.  XI.  affections.  The  connexion  thus  formed  was  probably  less 
confidential  and  intimate  than  Eddi  would  represent  it^; 
but  Wilfrid  thought  he  saw  in  the  young  untamed  barbarian 
the  rough  material  of  future  nobleness, — a  force  that  might 
be  guided,  and  a  heart  that  might  be  won.  He  hoped  to 
train,  soften,  and  Christianize  this  strong  ardent  nature  ^ ; 
but  one  would  think  he  must  have  felt  a  shock  when 
Cad  walla, '  beginning  to  contend  for  the  realm '  of  Wessex  ^, 
not  only  gathered  around  him  a  band  of  '  broken  men ' 
resembling  in  some  sort  the  garrison  of  Adullam,  but 
attacked  and  slew  the  bishop's  own  royal  patron  Ethelwalch, 
as  an  ally  of  Kentwin,  and  therefore  an  obstacle  in  his 
path.  He  then  wasted  Sussex  '  with  cruel  ravages,'  until 
two  ealdormen  whom  Wilfrid  had  converted,  Berchtun  and 
Cadwalla,  Andhun,  combined  to  drive  him  out  *.  In  685  ^,  the  death 
West-  c>f  Kentwin  was  immediately  followed  by  Cadwalla's 
Saxons.  accession  to  the  throne :  he  used  his  new  power  to  avenge 
himself  on  Sussex,  which  he  conquered  ^,  slaying  Berchtun : 
and  one  cannot  but  ask  whether  the  apostle  of  Sussex  was 
passive  in  such  a  crisis,  or  whether  his  influence  was  used 
in  vain.  Cadwalla  sent  his  brother,  who  was  called  Mul, 
'the  half-breed,'  and  who  is  described  as  a  brave  and 
spirited  youth  '^,  to  make  a  raid  on  Kent,  which  was  in  an 

^  He  says  that  they  became  to  each  other  as  father  and  son ;  Eddi,  42. 
See  above,  p.  269.  Malmesbury  says  that  Wilfrid  gave  him  both  horses 
and  money  ;  Gest.  Pontif.  1.  c. 

'^  To  *  the  new  nations  the  ministry  of  Christianity  was '  mainly  '  to  lay 
hold  on  fresh  and  impetuous  natures  ...  to  train  and  educate  and  apply 
to  high  ends  the  force  of  powerful  wills  and  masculine  characters  ; '  Dean 
Church,  Gifts  of  Civilization,  &c.  p.  317. 

^  Chronicle,  a.  685. 

*  Bede,  iv.  15  :  *  Saeva  caede  .  .  .  mox  expulsus  est  a  ducibus  regis,'  &c. 
For  this  use  of  *  dux  *  see  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  186. 

^  So  Florence.  It  has  been  said  that  Kentwin  resigned  the  crown  and 
became  a  monk  (see  a  poem,  not  by  Alcuin,  in  Alcuin.  Op.  ii.  549),  and 
that  he  named  Cadwalla  his  heir  (Malm.  G.  P.  v.  205).  The  poem 
referred  to,  'On  the  basilica  built  by  Bugge,  daughter  of  a  king  of 
England '  (Kentwin),  is  ascribed  to  Aldhelm.  It  was  written  in  Ine's 
days.  It  describes  the  '  sacellum  '  which  Bugge  erected,  its  dedication - 
day,  its  rich  altar-cloths,  &c.  The  '  Bugge '  who  was  also  called  '  Heaburg ' 
was  perhaps  the  same  person. 

*  Bede,  1.  c.  Hence,  in  Thorn  (X  Script.  1770),  he  is  called  king  of 
Sussex. 

'  Hen.  Hunt.  iv.  5,  calls  him  '  fortissimus,'  and  says  that  the  invasion 


His  conquest  of  the  Isle  of  Wight.      393 

unsettled   condition,  owing  to   the  recent  death  of  King  chap.  xi. 
Lothere^  while  under  treatment  for  wounds  received  in 
battle  with  South-Saxon  auxiliaries  of  his  revolted  nephew 
Eadric,  who  then  reigned  a  year  and  a  half,  and  on  dying " 
left  the  realm  in  confusion.     But  the  third  campaign  of 
Cadwalla   had   more   important   results.     He   resolved  to  Conquest 
recover  the  Isle  of  Wight,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  had  wj^ht. 
been  conquered  by  Wulfhere  and  given  to  Ethelwalch^. 
He  would  again  people  it  with  West-Saxons ;  and,  although 
he  was  not  yet  baptized  *,  and  must  therefore  have  been 
a  cause  of  anxiety  to  the  West- Saxon  clergy  who  looked 
back  to  the  days  of  Kenwalch,  he  vowed  that  if  he  were 
victorious,  he  would  devote  a  fourth  part  of  the  isle  and  of 
the  spoils  to  the  God  of  his  friend  Wilfrid  ^.     The  conquest  The 
was  marked  by  a  pathetic  tragedy :  two  young  brothers  ^f  ^^wald. 
of  the  island  sub-king  Arwald  had  fled  to  the  mainland, 
hidden  themselves  at  Stoneham^  on  the  Itchen,  and  had 
there  been  betrayed  to  Cadwalla,  who  doomed  them,  as 
a    matter    of    course,   to    death.     A    West-Saxon    abbot, 
Kynibert,   living    in    a    monastery   at    the    neighbouring 


was  by  his  own  request.     Bromton  calls  him  'Wolf,'  X  Script.  741.     See 
Lappenberg,  i.  260. 

^  Bede,  iv.  26  :  '  Quo  videlicet  anno,'  &c.  Lothere  died  Feb.  6,  685. 
Among  the  'Dooms'  ascribed  to  him  and  to  Eadric  is  a  reference 
to   the  practice  of  giving   evidence   at  the   altar ;    Thorpe,  Anc.  Laws, 

p.  15- 

'^  Elmham  says,  he  fell  in  battle  with  Cadwalla  and  Mul ;  Hist.  Mon. 
Aug.  p.  252.  He  had  long  harassed  his  uncle  by  '  civil  war,*  Malmesb.  G. 
Reg.  i.  I.  He  reigned  '  without  the  love  and  respect  of  the  Kentishmen  '  ; 
Bromton,  X  Script.  741  :  but  in  686  he  gave  some  land  to  SS.  Peter  and 
Paul's  in  Canterbury,  'adjoining  that  which  king  Lotharius  of  holy 
memory  is  known  to  have  given  to  blessed  Peter  ; '  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  31. 

^  See  above,  p.  210. 

*  '  Necdum  regeneratus,  ut  ferunt,  in  Christo  ; '  Bede,  iv.  16. 

^  Bede,  iv.  16.  On  this  see  Malmesb.  G.  Reg.  i.  s.  34,  *  Etsi  approbamus 
affectum,  improbamus  exemplum  ; '  and  Elmham,  p.  253  :  both  quote 
Ecclus.  xxxiv.  24,  Vulg.  The  chronicle  says  that  he  gave  to  Medeshamstede 
'  Hoge,  which  is  in  an  island  called  Heabur-eahg,'  in  the  times  of  abbot 
Egbald.  But  he  was  not  abbot  until  about  709  ;  Monast.  Angl.  1.  346. 
Cadwalla  appears  to  have  witnessed  a  grant  of  land  to  Malmesbury,  made 
in  688  ;  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  32.     See  above,  p.  295. 

^  '  Ad  Lapidem,'  Bede,  1.  c.  These  princes  were  the  last  of  the  line  of 
Wihtgar,  Cerdic's  nephew. 


394       Conversion  of  the  people  of  Wight. 

CHAP.  XI.  Reedford  or  Redbridge  ^  took  courage  to  '  repair  to  his 
king,  who  was  then  being  cured  of  wounds  inflicted  on  him 
while  fighting  in  the  island,'  and  begged  that  if  the  youths 
must  die,  they  might  first  be  instructed  in  Christianity  and 
baptized^.  Cadwalla  made  no  objection  to  this  request; 
and  the  abbot,  '  after  teaching  them  the  word  of  truth,  and 
washing  them  in  the  font  of  salvation,  assured  them  of  being 
received  into  the  heavenly  kingdom;  so  that  when  the 
slaughterer  came,  they  gladly  underwent  temporal  death, 
as  a  passage  to  life  eternal  ^.'  These  '  martyred  brothers  of 
King  Arwald,  crowned  by  the  special  grace  of  God,'  and 
long  commemorated  on  the  21st  of  August  "^j  on  which  day 
in  686  they  were  put  to  death,  should  be  remembered  as 
'  the  first  fruits  of  all  people  of  that  isle  who  were  saved 
through  faith.'  Christianity  made  its  way  into  the  Isle 
by  means  of  Cadwalla's  promise:  Wilfrid  received  three 
hundred  hydes  of  its  land,  and  assigned  them  to  Bernwin, 
his  nephew  and  one  of  his  clergy,  giving  him  also  a  priest 
named  Hiddila,  '  who  might  administer  the  word  and  the 
laver  of  life  to  all  who  wished  to  be  saved  ^.'  So  passed 
away  the  old  Teutonic  idolatry,  so  came  in  the  new  faith 
of  the  world's  '  Healer,'  as  the  professed  religion  of  the  last 
English  district  that  had  remained  in  the  darkness  which 
had  begun  to  retreat  before  Augustine,  and  which  was  now 
expelled  from  its  insular  haunts  by  Wilfrid  ^. 
Theodore  And  when  this  work  of  his  had  been  done  in  the  far 
1®*:?"?!^!^  south,   his   severance   from    the    north   came   to   an   end. 

to  Wilfrid.  ' 

Theodore  was  too  great  and  good  a  man  to  be  untouched 
by  admiration  for  the  mission-work  which  Wilfrid  had 

^  See  Lappenberg,  i.  260  ;  Freeman,  Engl.  Towns  and  Distr.  p.  174. 
Redbridge  is  a  station  between  Southampton  and  Lyndhurst-road. 

2  *Fidei  sacramentis  imbui,'  Bede.  1.  c.  In  this  phrase  (see  it  also  in 
Bede,  ii.  15,  iii.  i,  iv.  27)  *  sacramenta '  means  sacred  truths.  For 
'  imbuo'  in  this  connexion  cp.  Bede,  ii.  14,  15  ;  iii.^. 

2  Bede,  iv.  16  :  *  Ubi  silentio  praetereundum,'  &c. 

"*  Lappenberg,  i.  260.  The  term  '  martyr '  was  thus  laxly  applied  to 
Ethelred  and  Ethelbert  (above,  p.  272),  Kenelm  of  Mercia,  Ethelbert  of 
East-Anglia,  'Edward  the  Martyr,'  and  earl  Magnus  of  Orkney. 

^  These  two,  it  is  said,  lived  at  Erading  and  St.  Helens. 

^  Thus,  says  Henry  of  Huntingdon,  'universae  regionum  partes  Christ i 
lumine  et  gratia  fruebantur  ; '  ii.  39. 


Theodore  reconciled  to   Wilfrid.  395 

done  in  exile ;  and  as  he  was  now  a  very  old  man,  his  chap.  xi. 
rigorous  and  imperious  nature  had  naturally  been  softened 
by  years.  Nor  could  he,  we  may  well  think,  be  wholly 
free  from  compunction  when  he  recalled  the  events  of 
678  ^  He  made  overtures  for  a  reconciliation;  and  Wilfrid 
met  him  by  appointment  in  London,  in  the  house  of  Bishop 
Erkenwald.  Eddi  puts  into  the  archbishop's  mouth  ^  words 
of  self-humiliation  which  cannot  be  literally  accepted ;  but 
it  is  clear  that  he  said  what  was  equivalent  to  regret  for 
Wilfrid's  sufferings,  and  to  a  desire  to  promote  his  restora- 
tion. We  are  even  told  that  he  proposed  to  recommend  him 
for  the  succession  to  his  own  see  ^,  which  in  the  course  of 
nature  would  soon  be  vacant ;  and  that  Wilfrid,  naturally 
enough,  preferred  to  return,  if  possible,  to  Northumbria. 
Theodore  then  wrote  to  King  Aldfrid,  referring,  says  Eddi, 
to  the  decision  of  Pope  Agatho,  and  the  later  declaration  of 
Pope  Benedict  in  Wilfrid's  behalf,  and  exhorting  him,  '  for 
the  redemption  of  his  brother  Egfrid's  soul,'  to  come  to 
terms  with  Wilfrid.  He  wrote  similarly  to  the  abbess 
Elfled,  who  probably  inherited  Hilda's  feelings  against 
Wilfrid*:  and  Eddi  preserves  for  us  a  letter  in  which  the 
aged  archbishop,  in  a  tone  of  pathetic  pleading,  entreated 
Ethelred   of  Mercia   to  be  the  '■  patron '  of   an  oppressed 

^  See  Smith's  Bede,  p.  754  :  also  Raine,  i.  71  ;  and  by  him  correct  Hook's 
characteristic  dogmatism,  to  the  effect  that  Theodore  'had  nothing  to 
regret,*  and  therefore  did  regret  nothing,  but  thought  that  Wilfrid  had 
been  punished  enough,  &c. ;  i.  175. 

*  Eddi,  43.  '  0  holy  bishop,  I  have  sinned  against  thee,  by  consenting 
to  the  act  of  the  kings  who,  without  any  sin  on  thy  part,  despoiled  thee 
of  thine  own  property  ...  I  confess  to  the  Lord  and  to  St.  Peter  the 
apostle.'  It  is  curious  to  see  how  Eddi  speaks  of  the  spoliation,  when  we 
should  expect  him  rather  to  speak  of  the  uncanonical  encroachment  and 
deprivation.  Fridegod  puts  into  Theodore's  mouth  three  lines  of  regret 
and  sympathy  :  '  Poenitet,  en,  fili,'  &c.,  1005.  Malmesbury  says,  G. 
Pontif.  iii.  103,  that  Theodore  confessed  all  his  sins  to  the  two  bishops  (!;. 

3  As  Eddi  words  it,  *  ut  in  sedem  meam  .  .  .  superstitem  et  haeredem 
vivens  te  constituam.'  Malmesbury,  *  Rogo  te  .  .  .  ut  .  .  .  sedem  archi- 
episcopatus  mei  subeas,'  &c.  (G.  Pontif.  p.  233).  Eadmer  puts  into  Wilfrid's 
mouth  a  grotesquely  insincere  compliment :  *I  think  you  treated  me  in 
that  way  with  the  intention  that  I  should  be  exercised  in  patience  .  .  . 
and  thus  reach  perfection  ; '  Vit.  Wilf.  44. 

*  This  seems  to  be  implied  in  Eddi's  words,  '  Nam  ad  iElfledam,*  &c. 
Later,  we  find  Elfled  taking  part  with  Wilfrid  ;  Eddi,  60. 


396  Wilfrid  restored  to   York, 

CHAP.  XI.  bishop  who,  '  deprived  for  a  long  time  of  his  own  property, 
had  laboured  much  in  the  Lord  among  the  heathen  ^.' 
*  Do  therefore,  my  son,  my  son,  in  regard  to  that  holy  man, 
as  I  have  besought  thee ;  and  if  thou  wilt  obey  thy  father, 
who  is  not  long  for  this  world,  it  will  greatly  avail  for 
thy  salvation.'  The  letter  contained  also  a  request  that, 
although  such  a  journey  might  seem  too  long,  Ethelred 
would  visit  Theodore  ;  '  let  mine  eyes  see  thy  pleasant  face, 
and  my  soul  bless  thee  before  I  die  2.'  Ethelred,  we  are 
then  assured, '  received  Wilfrid  willingly'  into  his  kingdom, 
while  he  was  on  his  way  homewards,  and  restored  to  him 
the  monasteries  and  lands  which  he  had  possessed  in 
Mercia ;  and  Aldfrid  himself  '  invited  Wilfrid  to  his  court, 
according  to  the  archbishop's  injunction  ^.' 
Wilfrid  Once   more,  therefore,  Wilfrid  returned   to   his   native 

North-^  ^  country,  probably  in  the  autumn  of  686  *.  But  on  what 
nmbria.  terms  did  he  return  ?  Let  us  remember  that,  according  to 
the  Roman  decree,  the  subdivision  of  the  original  diocese  of 
York  was  to  be  annulled,  and  Wilfrid  was  to  be  reinstated 
in  that  diocese,  as  it  had  existed  before  678  :  that  done, 
a  new  Council  was  to  be  held  in  Northumbria,  with  the 
assent  of  which  he  was  to  choose  new  bishops,  who  were 
thereupon  to  be  consecrated  by  Theodore.  What  was 
actually  done  appears  to  be  this  : — Wilfrid,  on  arriving  in 
the  North-country,  found  the  new  see  of  Hexham  vacant 
by  the  recent  death  of  Eata  ^.  He  was  thereupon  put  in 
possession  of  that  church;  and  after  a  certain  interval, 
Bosa  being  compelled  or  induced  to  retire  from  York,  and 
Eadhed  to  give  up  Ripon,  Wilfrid  regained  both  the  cathe- 
dral church  for  which  he  had  been  consecrated,  and  the 
minster  which  he  had  ruled  as  abbot  ^.      Thus,  as  Bede 

^  Theodore  was  sure  to  appreciate  Wilfrid's  work  among  Frisians  and 
South  Saxons. 
2  Eddi,  43.  ^  Eddi,  44. 

*  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  172. 

'"  Eata  died,  says  Bede,  v.  2,  in  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Aldfrid. 
He  had  been  (i)  abbot  of  Melrose,  (2)  of  Melrose  and  Lindisfarne,  (3) 
bishop  of  Hexham  and  Lindisfarne,  (4)  of  Lindisfarne  only  when  Tunbert 
became  bishop  of  Hexham  in  681,  (5'  again  of  Hexham  only  in  685. 

*  Eddi,  44,  says  that  Aldfrid  (i)  bestowed  on  Wilfrid  the  monastery 


The  Compromise,  397 

says,  in  his  curt  reference  to  these  events,  '  he  recovered  chap.  xr. 
his  own  see  ^ : '  but  was  it  the  centre,  as  before,  of  a  diocese  Regains 

part  of  his 

coextensive  with  the  kingdom  ?  It  was  not,  ror  the  diocese  former 
of  Lindisfarne  retained  its  distinct  existence :  Cuthbert  was  bishopric, 
regarded  as  legitimate  bishop  of  Lindisfarne,  in  flat  dis- 
regard of  the  Roman  decree,  until  his  death  in  the  March 
of  687,  some  months  after  the  return  of  Wilfrid,  who  then 
took  charge,  as  we  should  say,  of  that  diocese,  and  '  kept ' 
it  until,  a  year  afterwards,  Eadbert  was  consecrated,  as 
Bede  expressly  says,  'in  place  of  Cuthbert^.'  This  occu- 
pancy or  administration  of  the  most  northern  of  the 
bishoprics  appears  to  have  had  a  parallel  in  Wilfrid's 
relation  to  Hexham  until  the  consecration  of  John  for  that 
bishopric  ;  an  event  which,  if  the  Chronicler's  reckoning 
of  the  duration  of  his  episcopate  be  accepted,  together 
with  the  date  of  his  death  ^,  must  be  placed  on  the  25th  of 

of  Hexham,  and  (2)  '  post  intervallum  temporis,'  according  to  the  decree 
of  pope  Agatho  and  his  synod,  '  his  own  see  in  York,  and  the  monastery 
at  Ripon,  expulsis  de  eo  alienis  episcopis.'  *  Pelluntur  moecM,'  says 
Fridegod. 

^  Bede,  v.  19  :  'Et  secundo  anno  Aldfridi  (i.  e.  between  May,  686,  and 
May,  687)  .  .  .  sedem  suam  .  .  .  recepit.'  The  Chronicler  and  Florence 
appear  to  confound  Wilfrid's  first  restoration  in  686  with  his  second  in 
705  :  that  is,  they  ignore  the  latter,  and  thus  are  led  to  say  that  he 
received  the  see  of  Hexham  in  686.  There  is  inconsistency  in  their 
statements  as  to  the  length  of  John's  episcopate,  which  they  make  to 
begin  in  685  (see  below).  Florence  says  that  Bosa  died  in  686,  and  John 
succeeded  him  at  York.  This  ante-dating  of  Bosa's  death  arose  from 
a  misapprehension  of  Bede's  words  in  v.  3,  which  refer  in  fact  to  a.  d.  705. 
Bosa  was  alive  in  704  ;  Eddi,  54  ;  Smith's  Bede,  p.  759  ;  Stubbs,  Registr. 
Sacr.  Angl.  p.  4. 

^  Bede,  iv.  29  :  *  Episcopatum  .  .  .  uno  anno  sei-^'abat  .  .  .  Vilfrid, 
donee  eligeretur  qui  pro  Cudbercto  antistes  ordinari  deberet.'  This  one 
phrase  shows  clearly  that  the  Roman  decree  was  not  really  obeyed. 

^  Bede  himself  says,  v.  6,  that  he  '  continued  in  episcopatu '  thirty-three 
years,  and  that  he  died  in  721.  This  might  be  understood  to  mean  that 
he  retired  to  his  monastery  after  thirty-three  years  of  active  episcopal 
work.  But  the  Chronicle  is  more  precise  :  *  In  721  the  holy  bishop  John 
died;  he  was  bishop  thirty-three  years,,  eight  months,  thirteen  days.* 
Florence  says  that  he  died  on  May  7,  721.  Therefore  he  was  con- 
secrated on  August  25,  687  (see  Stubbs,  Registr.  p.  4  ;  Raine,  i.  86),  and 
not  in  685.  In  other  words,  John  was  not  bishop  of  Hexham  when 
Wilfrid  returned,  and  did  not  retire  to  make  room  for  him,  as  Richard 
of  Hexham  (X  Script,  296)  and  Elmham  (Hist.  Mon.  Aug.  p.  280)  say, 
and  as  Smith  supposed,  p.  754,  and  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  140.     Smith 


398  John^  bishop  of  Hexham, 

tHAP.  XI.  August,  687,  about  five  months  after  the  death  of  Cuthbert. 
Certainly,  during  that  interval,  Wilfrid  must  be  regarded 
as  the  one  chief  pastor  of  Northumbria  ;  but  while  he  was 
undoubtedly  bishop  of  York,  and,  as  such,  '  ordinary '  of 
the  Church  in  Deira,  it  appears  that  he  was  only  the 
*  administrator '  of  Hexham  and  Lindisfarne,  probably  with 
the  understanding  that  he  should  approve  of  the  selection 
of  prelates  for  those  two  churches,  but  without  any  pros- 
pect of  a  provincial  Council  to  be  held  for  their  appoint- 
ment. Lindsey  was  treated  as  out  of  the  question,  being 
no  longer  within  the  Northumbrian  realm  ^  Thus,  on  the 
whole,  we  see  that  Wilfrid  was  content  to  accept  an 
arrangement  which  fell  short  of  the  strict  requirements  of 
Rome. 

Those  months  during  which  he  discharged  episcopal 
functions  in  the  diocese  of  Aidan  and  of  Cuthbert  were 
marked  by  some  distress  or  peril  to  the  Lindisfarne  com- 
munity, which,  in  Bede's  prose  Life  of  Cuthbert,  is  described 
mysteriously  as  a  *  breeze  of  trial'  under  which  many 
of  the  brethren  were,  minded  to  '  leave  their  home  rather 
than  dwell  there  at  such  risk  of  expulsion  ^ ' : — in  his 
metrical  work  on  the  Miracles  of  St.  Cuthbert  he  gives 
a  little  more  information,  or  at  least  helps  us  to  infer 
that  what  he  there  refers  to  as  a  *  north  wind  shaking 
the  roofs  of  Lindisfarne  ^ '  may  have  been  some  threatened 
descent  of  the  Picts,  now  free  to  harry  the  Border. 
John,  Wilfrid,  as  we  have  seen,  parted  with  the  charge  of 

Hexham.  Hexham  in  the  late  summer  of  the  year  after  his  return. 
On  Sunday  the  25th  of  August,  687,  a  bishop  was  con- 
adds  the  suggestion  that  Cuthbert  retired  to  make  room  for  Wilfrid ; 
Bede's  account  of  the  matter  disposes  of  this  entirely,  iv.  28.  See  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  iii.  171. 

^  On  the  principle  here  involved,  that  the  ecclesiastical  divisions  should 
be  conformed  to  the  political,  see  the  writer's  *  Notes  on  Canons  of  First 
Four  Councils,*  p.  176. 

*  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  40  :  *  Tentationis  aura,'  &c.,  and  *  repellendi  ac 
destruendi  essent.'  It  w^as,  he  says,  foreshown  by  the  circumstance,  that 
at  the  moment  of  Cuthbert's  death  the  monks  then  in  Fame,  and  also 
the  Lindisfarne  community,  were  singing  in  their  nocturns  the  psalm, 
'  Deus,  repulisti  nos.' 

'  De  Mivac.  Cuthb.  s.  37  :  'aquilo  niveis  confisus  in  armis.* 


John^  bishop  of  Hexham.  399 

secratecl  for  that  '  goodliest  of  Transalpine  churches,'  who  chap.  xi. 
was  to  become  the  object  of  greater  reverence  than  any- 
northern  saint  except  Cuthbert\  and  to  be  invoked  as 
a  patron  by  '  the  glorious  Athelstane '  on  his  way  to  the 
field  of  Brunanburgh  -.  This  was  John,  famous  as  '  St.  John 
of  Beverley'  from  'the  monastery  which  he  founded  in 
Deira-wood  ^,'  and  to  which  he  at  last  retired  to  die.  He 
was  sent,  while  a  youth,  to  the  ecclesiastical  school  of 
Canterbury,  where  he  received  from  Theodore  himself 
instructions  in  theology*,  and  also  some  maxims  in 
medicine,  which,  when  a  bishop,  he  remembered  and 
applied  ^.  He  afterwards  entered  the  monastery  of 
Whitby  ^ :  and  Bede  reckons  him  among  the  ^\^  monks 
of  that  house  whose  merits  raised  them  to  the  episcopate. 
Some  traits  of  character  which  Bede  mentions  give  us 
a  very  pleasing  impression  of  his  genial  kindness  towards 
young  men  under  his  authority  ^ ;  while,  as  bishop  of 
Hexham,  he  •  showed  his  love  for  devotional  retirement 
after  the  fashion  of  Aidan  and  Cuthbert,  by  providing 
himself  with  a  house,  surrounded  by  a  belt  of  wood  and  an 
earthwork,  and  adjoining  a  cemetery  of  St.  Michael,  a  mile 


^  See  Raine,  i.  90,  and  Scott's  '  Gray  Brother.' 

2  Ailred,  in  X  Script.  357:  '  Audiens  .  .  .  haec  .  .  .  rex,  ''Magnus 
est,"  inquit,  "iste  Johannes."'  He  prayed  at  the  shrine,  and  gave  the 
privilege  of  sanctuary  to  the  minster  of  Beverley.     See  above,  p.  103. 

^  Bede,  v.  2  :  '  Monasterii  quod  vocatur  Inderauuda,  id  est,  In  Silva 
Derorum.'  The  present  name  is  derived  from  '  a  colony  of  beavers  in  the 
Hull  river.' 

*  Bromton,  in  X  Scriptores,  794. 

^  Bede,  v.  3  :  *  I  remember  that  archbishop  Theodore  used  to  say  that 
it  was  very  dangerous  to  bleed  a  person  when  both  the  moon  is  waxing 
and  the  tide  is  rising.*     Cp.  Bede,  '  de  Minutione  Sanguinis.* 

*  Bede,  iv.  23. 

'  See  the  beautiful  story  of  Herebald  in  Bede,  v.  6.  The  young  cleric 
is  riding  with  some  young  laymen  in  attendance  on  the  bishop,  but 
persists,  against  the  latter's  wish,  to  join  them  in  a  gallop  ;  he  overhears 
the  bishop  say,  'What  pain  you  are  giving  me!';  he  is  thrown,  and 
fractures  his  skull :  the  bishop  spends  the  night  alone  in  prayer  for  him, 
visits  him  in  the  morning,  and  asks,  '  Do  you  know  who  is  speaking  to 
you?*  'Yes,  you  are  my  beloved  bishop.'  Herebald  quickly  recovered, 
was  re-baptized  (his  former  baptizer  having  been  '  too  dull  to  learn  the 
rite*),  and  lived  to  become  abbot  of  Tynemouth.  Two  other  stories 
represent  John  as  dedicating  '  churches*  on  private  estates  (v.  4,  5). 


400  Eadberty  bishop  of  Lindisfarne. 

CHAP.  xr.  and  a  half  from  Hexham,  and  on  the  north  bank  of  the 
Tyne  ^.  Here  he  used  to  spend  such  time,  especially  in 
Lent,  as  he  could  secure  for  prayer  and  study,  and  would 
'  keep  with  him,  for  charity,  some  poor  man  afflicted  by 
special  sickness  or  need.'  The  fervent  affection  which 
Bede  shows  for  his  memory  is  explained  by  the  fact  that 
he  received  deacon's  and  priest's  orders  from  his  hands, 
in  the  years  691-2  and  702-3  ^. 
Eadbert  And  the  successor  of  Cuthbert  was^a  man  of  the  same 

tarne.  pious  simplicity.  Eadbei^t,  says  Bede,  was  consecrated 
a  year  after  Cuthbert's  death,  i.  e.  about  Easter  in  688  ^ , 
'  a  man  remarkable  for  his  knowledge  of  Scripture  and  his 
observance  of  Divine  precepts,  and  particularly  for  alms- 
giving ;  insomuch  that,  according  to  the  law  (i.  e.  of  Moses), 
he  gave  to  the  poor  a  tenth  part  not  only  of  animals, 
but  of  all  fruits  of  the  earth,  and  even  of  his  clothes*.' 
He  restored  tranquillity  to  the  agitated  community  of  his 
island  ^ ;  and  improved  the  cathedral  church  of  thatched 
oak  which  Finan  had  reared,  and  Theodore  had  dedicated 
to  St.  Peter,  by  removing  the  reeds  from  the  roof,  and 
covering  both  it  and  the  walls  with  lead  ^.  He  too,  like 
John  and  like  Aidan,  was  wont  to  retire  for  devotion 
to  a  secluded  projection  of  land  'enclosed  by  the  waves 

*  Bede,  v.  2  :  '  Est  mansio  quaedam  secretior/&c.  Richard  of  Hexham 
calls  the  place  Erneshow  (Eagles'  hill),  and  believes  the  'oratory'  of 
St.  Michael  to  have  been  begun  by  Wilfrid  ;  X  Script.  291.  Bede  got  his 
information  from  Berctun,  abbot  of  Inderawood.  For  Aidan's  habit,  see 
above,  p.  162. 

2  Bede,  v.  24.     He  was  ordained  deacon  at  the  early  age  of  nineteen. 
'  Bede,  iv.  29  :  '  Ordinatus  est  autem.* 

*  The  '  tithe '  thus  set  apart  was  not  Hithe  in  its  modern  sense,'  in  that 
it  went  to  the  poor  ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  261.  In  Theodore's  Peniten- 
tial we  find,  '  Presbitero  (for  this,  rather  than  •  presbiter,'  must  surely  be 
the  reading)  decimas  dare  non  cogitur,'  b.  ii.  c.  2.  s.  8  ;  and  'Decimas  non 
est  legitimum  dare,  nisi  pauperibus  et  peregrinis,  sive  laici  suas  ad 
ecclesias,'  b.  ii.  c.  14.  s.  10.  See  Lord  Selborne,  Anc.  Facts  and  Fictions, 
p.  107,  on  the  purport  of  this,  as  placing  the  payment  of  tithes  on  'the 
footing  of  customs,'  &c.  Cp.  Diet.  Chr.  Ant.  ii.  1965.  Later,  Bede 
speaks  of  a  •  tribute '  to  the  bishop  as  generally  enforced  ;  Ep.  to  Egb.  4. 
See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  183. 

^  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  40.  To  this  relief  from  perils,  Herefrid  (quoted  by 
Bede)  applies  the  words  of  Ps.  cxlvii.  2,  3. 

*  Bede,  iii.  25  :  '  Sad  episcopus  loci  ipsius  Eadberct.'  &c.     Cp.  p.  191. 


End  of  Benedict  Btscop,  401 

of  the  sea^,'  and  there  pass  Lent,  and  the  forty  days  before  chap.  xi. 
Christmas.     We  seem  to  get  a  glimpse  of  his  inward  life 
when  we  read  that  he  used  to  pray  against  a  sudden  death, 
and  desired  to  pass  away  after  a  long  illness ; — and  such  an 
end,  says  Bede,  was  granted  to  him  2. 

Such  an  end  too  was  appointed,  in  the  first  year  of  his  End  of 
episcopate,  first  to  the  acting  abbot  of  Wearmouth,  and  sfscop!^ 
then  to  its  venerable  founder.  Sigfrid  was  a  chronic 
invalid;  and  Benedict,  the  indefatigable  traveller,  was 
for  three  years  affected  by  what  we  call  a  creeping  palsy  ^. 
Yet  while  his  lower  limbs  were  motionless,  he  ceased 
not  to  'praise  God  and  exhort  the  brethren.'  He  bade 
them  observe  the  rule  which  he  had  compiled  with  such 
care  and  after  such  varied  experience ;  urged  them  to  keep 
entire  the  library  which  he  had  brought  from  Rome ;  but 
above  all  things  insisted  on  the  duty  of  choosing  an  abbot 
not  for  the  sake  of  high  birth,  but  purely  for  personal 
merits.  '  I  tell  you  of  a  truth,'  he  said,  '  that  of  two  evils 
I  should  much  prefer  that  this  monastery  should  become 
a  wilderness  for  ever,  than  that  my  brother  by  blood, 
who,  we  know,  does  not  walk  in  the  way  of  truth  *,  should 
succeed  me  here  as  abbot.'  He  exhorted  them  always 
to  choose  out  the  fittest  man  from  their  own  community, 
according  to  the  rule  of  'the  great  abbot  Benedict,'  and 
according  to  the  provisions  of  the  letter  of  privilege 
belonging  to  their  house;  and  to  'present  the  person  so 
chosen  to  the  bishop  for  benediction  ^.'  Very  touching  is 
Bede's   account  of  this  long  decline  of  Benedict  Biscop. 

^  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  42.     It  had  been  so  used  by  Cuthbert. 

^  Bede,  V.  C.  43  :  *  Ut  non  repentina  morte,  sed  longa  excoctus  aegri- 
tudine,  transiret  e  corpore.'     Cp.  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  11. 

^  Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  9,  and  Horn.  25,  '  infirmitatis  martyrio.' 

*  *  Fratrem  .  .  .  inopia  cordis  a  se  longissime  distantem  ; '  Anon.  Hist. 
Abb.  Benedict  was  thus  strongly  opposed  to  the  notion  of  treating 
abbacies  as  '  family  benefices ' ;  see  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  257.  In  the 
old  Scotic  monasteries  '  the  abbatial  succession  came  to  be  confined  to 
members  of  the  clan  of  the  founder ' ;  Stuart,  Pref.  to  *  Book  of  Deer,' 
p.  cviii ;  Reeves,  Adamn.  p.  335  ;  Skene,  ii.  68,  338. 

^  Comp.  Faricius,  Vita  S.  Aldhelmi,  c.  2,  speaking  of  Aldhelm's  care  to 
secure  free  and  worthy  elections  :  '  Jam  tunc  enim  ambitio  monachorum 
inoleverat :  jam  non  ut  pastor  per  ostium,  sed  ut  fur  aliunde,  volebat 
mercenarius  intrare,'  &c.     Cp.  Theodore's  Penit.,  b.  2.  c.  6.  s.  1-5. 

Dd 


402  End  of  Benedict  Biscop, 

CHAP.  XI.  His  nights  were  often  wearisome  from  sleeplessness ;  he 
would  then  'call  to  him  a  reader,  and  desire  to  hear  the 
account  of  Job's  patience,  or  some  other  passage  of 
Scripture,  which  might  alleviate  his  depression';  and  at 
each  canonical  hour  he  summoned  some  monks,  and  joined 
his  voice  to  theirs  in  the  antiphonal  psalmody.  He  and 
Sigfrid  had  a  farewell  meeting,  the  latter  being  carried 
on  a  couch  into  Benedict's  cell :  the  old  friends  were 
assisted  to  take  a  tender  embrace  of  each  other  ^ ;  Sigfrid 
was  laid  down  beside  Benedict  with  his  head  on  the  same 
pillow,  and  their  attendants  had  to  bring  their  faces 
together  for  the  last  kiss.  'After  taking  counsel  with 
Sigfrid  and  the  whole  brotherhood,'  Benedict  sent  for 
Ceolfrid  the  abbot  of  Jarrow,  and,  with  the  approval 
of  all,  made  him  head  of  both  houses,  on  the  12th  of  May, 
688  -.  Sigfrid  died  on  the  22nd  of  August :  Benedict  lived 
on  into  the  next  year,  and  passed  away  early  in  the 
morning  of  the  12th  of  January,  689,  while  the  monks 
assembled  in  church  were  singing  '  Deus,  quis  similis  ^  ? ' 
and  those  who  kept  watch  in  his  chamber,  after  hearing 
the  Gospels  read  by  a  priest  throughout  the  long  wintry 
night,  looked  at  his  face  for  the  last  time  in  life,  shortly 
after  his  last  Communion.  He  was  not  more  than  sixty 
years  old. 
Cadwalla  That  year  of  Ceolfrid's  accession  to  the  abbacy  of  both 
Rome^  houses,  or  of  the  one  twofold  house,  was  marked  in  Wessex 
by  the  strange  end  of  a  brief  reign,  which  had  blazed 
'like  a  meteor  in  the  troubled  air'  of  the  south.  Cad- 
walla's  brother  Mul,  in  the  course  of  a  fierce  raid  in  Kent, 
had  fallen  with  twelve  adherents  into  the  hands  of  foes 
whom  he  despised  as  womanish*.     They  suddenly  beset 

^  *  Nee  tantum  habuere  virium  ut  propius  posita  ora  ad  osculandum  se 
alterutrum  conjungere  possent,  sed  et  hoc  fraterno  compleverunt  officio.' 
Bede  calls  it  '  a  lamentable  sight ' ;  Hist.  Abb.  10. 

^  The  Anon.  Hist,  gives  this  date,  'the  third  year  of  king  Aldfrid,  the 
eighth  from  the  foundation  of  St.  Paul's  monastery.'  The  third  year  of 
Aldfrid  began  May  20,  687, — reckoning  from  Egfrid's  death. 

^  In  our  reckoning,  the  83rd.  See  Bede's  25th  homily  for  a  sketch 
of  the  life  of  Benedict.  He  urges  his  brother-monks  to  be  '  worthy  of  so 
good  a  father,'  to  '  follow  his  example  and  precepts.' 

*  'Nam  cum  hostes  effoeminatos  duceret,'  &c. ;  Hen.  Hunt.  iv.  5. 


Cadivalla  goes  to  Rome,  403 

the  house  wherein  he  was,  and  burned  it  with  all  whom  chap.  xi. 
it  contained  \  Cad  walla  avenged  him  by  another  irruption 
into  Kent^;  but  this  was  the  last  of  his  wars.  He  had 
now,  at  last,  resolved  to  be  baptized;  and  the  intensity 
of  his  nature,  combined  with  that  extreme  form  of  local 
religiousness  which  he  may  well  have  imbibed  from 
Wilfrid,  made  him  resolve  on  going  a  long  way  for  the 
cleansing  '  laver/  even  to  the  shrine  of  the  chief  Apostle. 
According  to  Bede's  conjecture,  he  had  a  hope  that  he 
should  die  soon  after  his  baptism,  and  so  secure  his  salva- 
tion^. So  it  was  that  Pope  Sergius  I,  who  had  come 
to  the  see  on  December  15,  687,  saw  in  the  following  year 
this  remarkable  catechumen  at  his  feet*.  He  who,  for 
all  his  admiration  of  a  missionary  bishop,  had  in  his  own 
person,  and  beyond  all  other  English  princes  of  his  time, 
represented  the  wild  Teutonic  thirst  for  slaughter  and 
conquest,  who  had  borne  the  banner  of  Wessex  through 
so  many  battles  against  the  defenders  of  their  own  soil, 
who  had  dipped  his  hands  in  the  blood  of  a  Christian  king 
and  earl,  of  crowds  of  Christians  in  Kent  and  Sussex,  and 
of  the  two  royal  boys  whom  he  allowed  to  be  christened 
before   he    slew   them, — who,   himself   as    yet  unpledged 

^  Chronicle,  a.  687  ;  Florence,  a.  687  ;  Bromton,  X  Script.  741.  Elmham 
says  that  Mul  has  been  erroneously  ranked  by  '  some  persons '  in  the  list 
of  Kentish  kings,  and  that  his  ashes  were  buried  in  St.  Augustine's, 
*  juxta  reges  Cantiae  praecedentes.'  According  to  Henry  of  Huntingdon 
he  had  *  deserved  and  brought  down  on  himself  the  curses '  of  Kentish 
monks.  ^  Chronicle,  1.  c. 

^  Bede,  v.  7  :  '  Simul  etiam  sperans,'  &c.  Elmham  imagined  that  both 
'  Cadwalader  king  of  the  Britons '  and  Cadwalla  king  of  the  West-Saxons 
went  to  Rome,  and  died  there,  on  the  same  day  !  p.  270.  The  Abingdon 
Chronicler  (i.  4)  puts  into  Cadwalla's  mouth  a  penitential  confession, 
'  Creator  creaturariim  Deus,  miserere  mei  super  omnes  homines  miseri,* 
&c.,  and  adds  that  he  resolved  to  be  baptized  *  cum  majori  solemnitate, 
although  the  sacrament  has  not  the  less  efficacy  in  itself  propter  personas 
baptizantium.' 

*  The  Chronicle  dates  Cadwalla's  journey  in  688  :  compare  Bede's  date, 
'  the  third  year  of  Aldfrid.*  Cadwalla,  then,  stayed  at  Rome  some  months, 
for  he  died  there  in  the  spring  of  689.  He  doubtless  went  through 
a  course  of  instruction  before  baptism.  Sergius,  says  Hodgkin,  was 
'  a  strong  man '  (vi.  354).  The  chief  event  of  his  pontificate  was  his 
successful  resistance  to  Justinian  II's  demand  that  he  should  accept  the 
canons  of  the  council  *  in  TruUo.'     He  died  in  701.    Above,  p.  356. 

D  d  a 


404        Baptism  and  Death  of  Cadwalla. 

CHAP.  XI.  to  Christ,  had  thought  to  secure  His  favour  for  invasion 
by  promising  to  give  part  of  its  spoils  to  Wilfrid, — this 
prince  got  the  benefit  of  a  corrupt  tone  of  thought  among 
contemporary  Christians,  and  bought,  far  too  cheaply,  even 
at  such  hands  as  Bede's  ^,  the  honours  of  Christian  piety 
by  receiving  baptism  under  the  name  of  Peter,  and  from 
the  hands  and  under  the  sponsorship  of  '  Peter's  successor  2/ 

His  death,  on  Easter  Eve,  April  10,  689.  His  own  anticipation  was 
fulfilled:  he  was  taken  ill  during  Easter- week,  while  he 
still  wore  his  white  baptismal  garment  ^,  and  died  on  the 
20th  of  April.  A  convert  of  such  rank  and  renown, — the 
first  of  six  English  kings  *  who  worshipped  as  pilgrims 
at  the  tomb  of  St.  Peter,  on  the  spot  now  occupied  by 
the  shrine  of  the  lamp-lit  '  Confession,' — was  naturally 
honoured  with  a  burial  in  his  church  ^ :  and  Bede  pre- 
serves the  tumid  verses  in  which  the  writer  of  Cadwalla's 
epitaph  celebrated  his  abandonment  of  his  kingdom,  his 
'  wondrous  faith,'  his  reverence  '  for  Peter  and  for  Peter's 
see,'  and  his  speedy  removal  to  a  heavenly  kingdom,  and 
to  the  fellowship  of  'the  sheep  of  Christ,'  after  the 
'cleansing  grace'  had  renewed  his  soul,  and  he  had 
partaken  of  light  at  the  source  of  its  world-wide  difiusion. 
According  to  the  few  words  in  prose  which  the  visitor 
to  St.  Peter's  would  read  immediately  below  this  intensely 
Roman  panegyric,  Cadwalla  was  about  thirty  years  of  age. 

^  Bede,  v.  7  :  *  Devotioiiis  ipsius  .  .  .  studium  religionis.'  It  never 
occurred  to  Bede  (and  that  it  did  not,  is  a  fact  of  painful  significance) 
that  Cadwalla's  manifest  duty  was  to  receive  baptism  from  his  own  West- 
Saxon  bishop,  and  then  to  remain  at  home  and  govern  his  people  like 
a  just  man  and  a  Christian. 

2  The  epitaph  calls  Sergius  '  ipse  pater  Fonte  renascentis.'  We  may 
assume  that  the  Chronicle  is  right  in  saying,  '  He  received  baptism  from 
the  pope.'  So  St.  Biriiius  was  both  the  baptizer  and  the  godfather  of 
Cuthred;  see  above,  p.  172. 

2  *  In  albis  adhuc  positus.'  Although  the  metrical  epitaph  says,  '  quern 
.  .  .  gratia  .  .  .  Protinus  albatum  vexit  in  arce  poli.'and  again,  '  candidus,' 
he  cannot  have  strictly  retained  the  '  whites '  until  the  day  of  his  death, 
which  was  outside  the  Paschal  octave.  The  poem,  *  de  Templo  Buggae,' 
says  he  was  taken  ill  '■•post  albas.'     See  above,  p.  136. 

*  One  of  these,  Ethel  wolf,  brought  his  boy  Alfred  with  him. 

'  His  tomb  (in  the  atrium,  near  the  original  grave  of  St.  Gregory)  was 
discovered  while  the  new  church  was  being  built,  but  disappeared  after- 
wards :  Lanciani,  Pagan  and  Chr.  Rome,  p.  232. 


Ine,  king  of  West-Saxons.  405 

He  was  succeeded  on  his  abdication — for  his  journey  to  chap,  xl 

Rome,  as  Bede  says,  was  equivalent  to  an  abdication — by 

Ine,  or  Ini,  often  called  Ina,  descended  from  a  younger  Ine,  king 

of  West* 

son  of  Cadwalla's  ancestor  Ceawlin  ^ :  whose  accession  saxons. 
suggests  to  Bede  the  mention,  not  of  his  '  laws '  or  of  his 
ecclesiastical  benefactions,  but  of  his  abdication  and 
departure  to  'the  Apostles'  threshold,'  in  the  hope,  as 
a  dominant  superstition  taught  even  Bede  to  say,  'that 
the  saints  might  give  him  all  the  friendlier  welcome  in 
heaven.'  But,  in  688,  according  to  Bede's  reckoning^, 
thirty-seven  years  lay  between  the  accession  of  Ine  and 
that  journey  which  he  undertook  when  his  wife,  by  a 
strange  symbolic  lesson,  had  taught  him  that  this  world's 
glory  would  pass  away  ^. 

His  first  act,  it  seems  *,  was  to  renew  the  war  against 
Kent;  it  lasted  until  the  people,  weakened  by  previous 
invasions  and  intestine  divisions,  were,  glad  to  make  terms 
with  him  by  a  '  wer-gild '  for  the  death  of  Mul.  There 
is  a  difference  of  reckoning  as  to  the  accession  of  their 
next  king  Wihtred,    the    legitimate  representative  of  the 

*  iEscingas '  or  descendants  of  iEsc  son  of  Hengist  ^.  He 
was  the  brother  of  the  slain  Eadric;  but  he  did  not  for 
some  few  years  succeed  in  making  good  his  claim  to  the 
whole  realm  of  Kent  ^.     And  while  the  secular  affairs  of 

^  See  the  Genealogies  in  App.  to  Florence.  Ine  there  appears  as  son  of 
Kenred  the  '  sub-regulus,'  and  great-grandson  of  Cutha,  who  was  son  of 
Cutliwine,  the  younger  brother  of  Cadwalla's  great-grandfather  Cutha. 
He  had  a  brother  Ingels,  and  two  sisters  reputed  as  saints,  Cuthburga, 
the  foundress  of  the  abbey  of  Wimborne,  and  Cwenburga.  The  fiction 
that  he  was  Cadwalla's  nephew  is  connected  with  the  Welsh  tale  about 

*  Cadwalader '  and  his  nephew  '  Ini.*     See  above,  p.  391. 

2  Bede,  v.  7,  dates  Ine's  abdication  in  725  :  the  Chronicle  dates  it  in  728. 
^  Malm.  G.  Reg.  i.  35. 

*  According  to  some  MSS.  of  Malm.  1.  c. :  see  Elmham,  p.  264.  Bromton 
dates  this  later,  X  Script.  758  ;  as  the  Chronicle  dates  the  peace  in  694. 
The  wer-gild  in  this  case  is  variously  described  ;  see  Palgrave,  p.  408. 

*  He  was  son  of  Egbert,  and  great-grandson  of  Eadbald. 

*  According  to  the  Chronicle,  a.  694,  he  succeeded  in  694,  and  reigned 
thirty-three  winters,  having  been  joint  king  with  Webheard  (Swebhard) 
in  692.  But  his  death  is  dated  in  725,  as  if  he  had  only  reigned  thirty- 
one  years.  Bede  says,  iv.  26,  that  after  Lothere's  death,  Eadric  reigned 
for  a  year  and  a  half,  i.  e.  until  August,  686  :  '  quo  defuncto,  reges  duUi 
vel  externi '  ravaged  Kent  for  some  time,  '  donee  legitimus  rex  Victred,  id 


4c6  Death  of  Theodore. 

CHAP.  XI.  the  ancient  realm  were  in  this  confusion,  it  was  bereft  of 
Death  of  its  great  ecclesiastical  head.  Theodore  was  eighty-eight 
Theodore.  ^^^^^  ^^  \^  ^^  year  after  Cadwalla's  baptism.  He  had 
already,  it  seems,  approved  of  the  publication,  by  some 
South-English  cleric,  of  certain  answers  given  by  himself, 
mostly  to  a  presbyter  called  Eoda,  to  questions  on  points  of 
penitential  discipline^.  Hence  the  collection  of  these 
answers  is  called  Theodore's  Penitential.  But  it  contains 
some  statements  of  opinion  which  cannot  well  have  come 
from  Theodore  ^.  On  the  whole,  and  with  some  exceptions, 
it  is  characterized  by  austerity,  and  a  disposition  to  provide 
by  express  and  detailed  rule  for  all  varieties  of  cases.  It 
exhibits  that  knowledge  of  Greek  customs  as  diflfering  more 
or  less  from  Koman,  which  we  should  expect  from  a  native 
of  Tarsus  ^.  It  also  shows,  here  and  there,  a  certain  lofti- 
ness and  insight  which  well  become  the  character  of  the 
great  primate  *.     And  it  points  to  something  like  a  settled 

est  filius  Ecgberti,  being  established  in  the  kingdom,  delivered  his  people, 
by  his  piety  and  his  activity,  from  external  invasion.'  Bede  says  that 
Wihtred  and  Swebhard  were  reigning  in  Kent  in  692  (v.  8)  :  and  that  in 
725  Wihtred  died  after  a  reign  of  thirty-four  and  a  half  years  (v.  23) — 
reckoned,  of  course,  so  as  to  begin  before  his  sole  kingship.  Hen.  Hunt, 
says,  '  he  held  the  kingdom  of  Kent  thirty-two  years,  nobiliter  et  pacifice. 
He  went  to  meet  Ine  with  pacific  entreaty,  and  persuaded  him  to  accept 
a  "fine"  for  Mul's  death.'  Later,  he  assigns  to  Wihtred  nearly  thirty-four 
years  ;  Hist.  Angl.  iv.  619.  Malmesbury  celebrates  the  king's  piety  and 
prosperity,  Gest.  Keg.  i.  35. 

^  Above,  p.  282.  Cp.  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  173  fif.  The  compiler 
describes  himself  as  a  '■  discipulus  Umbrensium,'  and  says  that  Eoda  is 
'  reported '  to  have  obtained  the  greater  number  of  these  rules,  or  state- 
ments of  opinion,  from  Theodore  himself,  in  answer  to  his  inquiries. 
From  the  '  Dialogue  of  Egbert '  we  learn  that  Theodore  established  the 
observance  of  a  fast  during  the  twelve  days  before  Christmas ;  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  iii.  413.    The  Greeks  now  fast  Nov.  15-Dec.  24. 

"^  E.  g.  b.  I.  c.  5.  s.  6, — the  opinion  that  a  person  baptized  by  a  heretic 
who  did  not  believe  rightly  in  the  Trinity  ought  to  be  baptized  again. 
The  compiler  says,  *  Hoc  Theodorum  dixisse  non  credimus  contra  Nicenae ' 
{sic)  'concilium/  a  mistake  for  the  council  of  Ai'les.  See  too  b.  i.  c.  9.  s.  12 
as  to  one  ordained  while  unbaptized.  In  b.  2.  c.  12.  s.  5  a  husband  who 
has  put  away  his  faithless  *  first  wife '  is  allowed  to  marry  another. 
See  above,  p.  282. 

^  See  b.  I.  c.  II.  s.  I  ;  c.  12.  s.  1,3;  b.  2.  c.  2.  s.  14  ;  c.  3.  s.  2,  7,  8  ;  c.  4. 
s.  4  ;  c.  8  ;  c.  12.  s.  6,  8. 

*  E.g.  *  True  conversion  can  take  place  at  the  last  hour,  quia  Dominus 
non  solum  temporis,  sed  et  cordis  inspector  est;'  b.  i.  c.  8.  s.  5.     *  Con- 


Death  of  Theodore.  407 

system  of  district  church  life  \  as  if  Theodore  had  endea- 
voured to  establish  such  a  system  in  the  Kentish  church, 
and  had  largely  succeeded. 

Theodore  died  on  the  19th  of  September,  690  2.  It  was 
said  that  he  had  long  before  foretold  the  age— eighty-eight 
— at  which  he  would  die,  as  having  had  it  impressed  on 
him  in  a  dream.  He  was  buried  in  the  monastery  of 
SS.  Peter  and  Paul,  and  within  the  church  itself,  because 
the  northern  '  porch,'  the  burial-place  of  his  predecessors, 
was  now  full  ^.  On  his  tomb  was  engraven  an  epitaph  of 
thirty-four  verses  ^,  of  which  Bede  gives  us,  as  sufficient 
specimens,  the  first  four  and  the  last  four,  and  surpasses 
all  that  they  may  have  said  by  the  simple  testimony, '  In 
his  episcopate  the  English  Churches  received  more  spiritual 
benefit  than  they  could  ever  gain  before  his  time  ^! 

fessio  autem  soli  Deo  agatur  licebit,  si  necesse  est  :  (Et  hoc  necessarium  in 
quibusdam  codicibus non  est') ;  b.  i.  c.  12.  s.  7.  '  Foolish  and  impracticable 
vows  are  to  be  broken  ;  *  b.  i.  c.  14.  s.  6.  *  De  mortuo  autem  Dei  solius 
est  notitia ; '  b.  2.  c.  14.  s.  2.  '  The  sick  may  take  food  and  drink  at  any 
hour  ; '  b.  2.  c.  14.  s.  13. 

^  E.  g.  b.  I.  c.  9.  s.  7,  '  presbiter  in  propria  provincia ;  *  b.  2.  c.  i.  s.  i, 
'  ecclesiam  licet  ponere  in  alium  locum  ; '  c.  2.  s.  7,  '  presbitero  licet  .  .  . 
populum  benedicere  in  Parasceue  ; '  and  on  laics  paying  tithe  '  suas  ad 
ecclesias,'  c.  14.  s.  10.  Cp.  Bede,  v.  4,  12.  Willibrord  planted  this  system 
in  Frisia  ;  Alcuin,  Vit,  Willibr.  i.  11.  See  above,  pp.  196,  269,  and  Lord 
Selborne,  Anc.  Facts  and  Fictions,  &c.,  p.  118. 

2  Bede,  v.  8. 

^  Bede,  ii.  3.     Elmham,  p.  286. 

*  For  '  pausare  *  as  used  in  the  first  line  see  above,  p.  293. 

'  For  a  summary  of  Theodore's  archiepiscopal  work  see  Wakeman,  Hist. 
Ch.  Engl.  p.  47.    But  it  is  beyond  question  that  he  had  a  despotic  temper. 


CHAPTER  XIL 


Burial  of  The  burial-day  of  such  a  prelate  as  Theodore  must 
always  be  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  a  Church.  It  is  not 
hard  to  enter  into  the  thoughts  of  the  high  ecclesiastics 
who  preceded  the  corpse,  as  it  was  borne,  for  the  first  time 
at  the  interment  of  any  archbishop,  through  the  northern 
porch,  now  full  of  sacred  remains,  into  the  actual  church  of 
St.  Peter ; — who  looked  down,  at  the  close  of  the  rite,  into 
that  open  grave,  dug  where  the  inner  wall  of  the  nave  just 
ran  between  it  and  the  sepulchre  of  Augustine.  There 
stood  the  venerable  Hadrian,  in  his  place  as  abbot  of  the 
minster  which  thus  asserted  its  high  privilege  ;  he  who  had 
escaped  the  burden  of  the  archbishopric  by  recommending 
the  stronger  man  who  had  just  laid  .it  down ;  he  who,  as 
companion,  adviser,  and  fellow-teacher,  had  not  a  little 
aided  him  to  bear  it.  And  near  the  grave  there  would  be 
a  few  prelates  who  had  been  suffragans  to  the  first  eff'ective 
metropolitan :  Gebmund  of  Rochester,  we  may  be  sure, 
attended,  and  probably  Erkenwald  of  London,  infirm  as  he 
was,  and  Heddi  of  the  great  West-Saxon  diocese,  unless  the 
war  between  Kent  and  Wessex  had  prevented  his  coming. 
Since  Wilfrid  had  returned  to  York,  there  had  been  no 
bishop  in  Sussex.  By  one  account,  Tyrhtel  was  now  bishop 
of  Hereford  ^ ;  Cuthwin  of  Leicester  was  apparently  dead : 
Saxulf  was  probably  failing :  Bosel  of  Worcester  was 
doubtless  detained  at  home  by  infirmities  which  disabled 
him  for  his  work.     Acci  and  Badwin  would  hardly  travel 

1  Mon.  H.  Brit.  p.  538. 


State  of  the  Kingdoms.  409 

from  Dunwich  and  Elmham,  nor  Ethelwin  from  Sidnacester,  chap.  xn. 
nor  Wilfrid,  John,  and  Eadbert  from  the  North.  The 
bishops  actually  present  at  these  memorable  obsequies 
would  feel  that  '  a  prince  and  a  great  man '  was  indeed 
gone  from  them :  they  might  occasionally  have  fretted 
under  his  absolutism,  but  they  could  not  fail  to  appreciate 
the  blank  caused  by  his  departure.  All  would  have  a  sense 
of  a  void  which  could  not  be  filled ;  the  Church  was 
inevitably  the  weaker  and  poorer  for  the  loss  of  that 
majestic  character,  with  its  dominating  will  and  its  rare 
faculties  for  government.  Whenever  any  difficulty  or 
emergency  might  arise,  it  would  be  the  harder  to  confront  • 
without  Archbishop  Theodore. 

For  the  present,  the  bark  of  the  Church  appeared  to 
be  in  smooth  waters.  The  kings  were  friendly,  on  the 
whole,  to  the  episcopate:  if  uncertainty  still  hung  over 
the  future  of  the  throne  of  Ethelbert,  Sebbi  of  Essex  was 
a  man  of  exceptional  piety,  of  whom  it  was  even  said 
that  he  would  have  been  fitter  for  a  bishopric  than  for 
a  kingdom  ^ :  Aldwulf  of  East-Anglia  was  he  who  had 
aided  in  the  foundation  of  Ely:  Ethelred  of  Mercia 
possessed  a  large  measure  of  that  personal  religiousness 
which  distinguished  so  remarkably  the  offspring  of  the 
'strenuous'  Pagan  Penda:  and  Wessex  and  Sussex  had 
exchanged  Cad  walla,  with  his  fierce  passions  and  incon- 
sistent impulses,  for  a  king  who  deserves  the  name  of 
great  ^,  and  who  in  one  of  the  early  years  of  his  reign  ^ 

*  Bede,  iv.  ii.  For  his  influence  in  keeping  his  people  from  apostasy, 
see  above,  p.  238. 

2  Freeman,  Old-Engl.  Hist.  p.  69.  '  As  a  wan-ior  Ina  was  equal,  as 
a  legislator  he  was  superior,  to  the  most  celebrated  of  his  predecessors  ; ' 
Lingard,  H.  E.  i.  135.  'Whether  he  came  to  the  throne  by  Cadwalla's 
adoption  or  by  election  of  the  great  men,  ...  is  unknown  to  us  ;  *  Schmid, 
Die  Gesetze  der  Angelsachsen,  p.  xxxvi.  *  From  the  time  when  he  first 
appears  on  the  stage  of  history  until  in  the  fullness  of  his  prosperity  he 
put  on  the  pilgrim's  dress,  and  died  in  obscurity  and  poverty  at  Rome,  his 
conduct  is  everywhere  pure,  noble,  disinterested  ; '  Stevenson,  Pref.  to 
Abingd.  Chron.  ii.  p.  xi. 

^  See  Johnson,  Engl.  Canons,  i.  129.  He  would  date  these  laws  in  693  : 
see  too  his  editor's  note.  Lingard,  H.  E.  i.  135,  adopts  this  date.  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  iii.  214,  say,  'probably  a.  d.  690.'  Erkenwald  seems  to  have 
died  in  693  (ib.  218)  :  and  it  is  hardly  probable  that  he  would  be  able, 


4IO  Laws  of  King  Ine. 

CHAP.  XII.  convened  a  West-Saxon  Witenagemot  which  enacted  what 
Ine'sLaws.  are  called  the  'Dooms '  or  Laws  '  of  Ine  ^'  At  this  assembly 
not  only  Heddi  of  Winchester,  but  Erkenwald  of  London 
was  present ;  both  are  spoken  of  similarly  as  Ine's  bishops, 
and  this  would  suggest  that  Ine  had  succeeded,  for  the 
time,  in  establishing  his  supremacy  over  London,  which 
was  generally  connected  by  some  such  ties  with  Mercia 
rather  than  with  Wessex  ^.  '  A  great  number  of '  monastic 
'  servants  of  God '  were  present  at  this  gathering :  among 
them,  we  may  be  tolerably  sure,  Aldhelm  of  Malmesbury 
had  his  place.  The  'right  laws'  there  enacted  had 
reference  to  '  the  health  of  souls '  as  well  as  to  the  stability 
of  the  realm,  and  thus  illustrate  the  peculiarly  close  union 
of  '  Church  and  State '  in  the  Old-English  Christian  king- 
doms ^,  in  which  it  was  natural  to  describe  the  Witenagemot 
as  a  '  Synod,'  and  its  secular  decrees  were  sometimes  blended 
with  ordinances  of  a  directly  religious  character^.  This 
interpenetration  of  the  spiritual  and  temporal  societies 
was  exhibited  on  an  inferior  stage  when  bishop  and 
ealdorman  appeared,  sitting  side  by  side,  at  the  shire-mote, 
'  to  expound  God's  law  and   the  world's   law  ^.'     Of   the 

from  his  infirmities,  to  come  into  Wessex  for  a  laborious  session  of  the 
Witan,  in  the  last  year  or  two  of  his  life.  On  the  other  hand,  a  year 
or  two  at  least  must  have  elapsed  between  Ine's  accession  and  this 
assembly. 

1  Johnson,  i.  131  ;  Thorpe,  Anc.  Laws,  p.  45  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii. 
214.  One  remarkable  point  in  these  laws  is  that  Ine  legislates  in  the  life- 
time and  *  with  the  counsel  and  teaching  of  his  father  Kenred,'  who  never 
reigned. 

2  Lingard,  H.  E.  i.  136  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  218. 

^  Freeman,  i.  369,  *  The  nation  was  deeply  religious  ;  the  Church  was 
deeply  national  ; '  and  in  Hist.  Essays,  iv.  240,  *  Nowhere  was  the  Church 
so  truly  the  nation  in  one  of  its  aspects;'  but  see  also  Stubbs,  Const. 
Hist.  i.  268,  '  The  relation  of  the  Church  to  the  State  was  thus  close, 
although  there  was  not  the  least  confusion  as  to  the  organization  of  functions, 
or  uncertainty  as  to  the  limits  of  the  powers  of  each.' 

*  See  the  Laws  of  Cnut,  made  in  a  Gemot  at  Winchester.  They  begin 
by  ordaining  '  that  men  above  all  other  things  should  ever  love  and 
worship  one  God.'  Alfred's  '  Dooms '  begin  with  the  Decalogue,  and 
include  the  decree  of  the  council  of  Jerusalem.  For  a  lax  use  of  '  synodus ' 
see  above,  p.  223. 

*  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  loi  ;  Kemble,  ii.  385  ;  Robertson,  Hist.  Ch.  iii. 
187.  The  Roman  legates  who  held  a  synod  in  787  forbade  bishops  *  in 
conciliis  suis  saecularia  judicare  ' ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  452. 


Renewal  of  Wilfrid's  troubles.  411 

seventy-nine  laws  of  Ine,  those  which  relate  to  the  Church  chap.  xn. 
deal  with  various  points  of  Church-life  and  Church-rights. 
Thus,  they  enforce,  under  penalty  of  '  hot  ^ '  or  pecuniary 
satisfaction,  the  baptism  of  infants  within  thirty  nights 
from  birth  ^, — the  abstinence  from  work  on  Sunday  "^^ — the 
observance  of  '  right  rule '  by  all  God's  ^  theowes '  or  bond- 
servants, i.  e.  the  monastic  bodies  *, — the  due  payment  of 
*  Church-scot  ^ '  every  Martinmas  for  the  roof  and  hearth 
owned  at  the  preceding  mid-winter.  They  recognize  the 
position  of  a  communicant,  or  one  who  ^  goes  to  housel  ^/ 
as  making  his  oath  of  higher  value.  They  refer  to  the 
institution  of  sponsorship,  and  define  the  'bot'  for  the 
slaughter  of  a  '  bishopson,'  or  godson  in  confirmation  ^,  as 
half  that  for  a  godson  properly  so  called.  They  presuppose 
the  special  solemnity  of  an  oath  taken  before  a  bishop. 
They  guard  the  privilege  of  sanctuary  ^,  as  sheltering  even 
capital  offenders.  They  order  that  he  who  buys  a  slave 
or  freeman  of  his  own  race,  and  sends  him  over  sea,  shall 
pay  his  wer-gild,  and  '  make  deep  satisfaction  to  God,'  i.  e. 
submit  to  severe  penance  inflicted  by  the  bishop  ^. 

It  would  have  been  difficult  under  any  circumstances 
to  find  a  successor  to  Theodore;  and  the  election  was 
apparently  yet  further  delayed  by  the  troubles  of  the 
kingdom  of  Kent.     And  during  this  interval,  the  question 

^  See  Thorpe,  Anc.  Laws,  p.  393,  for  a  list  of  ecclesiastical  'bots.' 

^  See  canons  under  king  Edgar,  no.  15,  Thorpe,  p.  396,  that  every  child 
is  to  be  baptized  within  thirty-seven  nights.  Laws  of  North.  Priests, 
no.  10,  ib.  417,  say,  within  nine  nights. 

^  See  above,  p.  376. 

*  *  Servus,'  'famulus,'  'famula,'  or  *  ancilla  Dei,'  being  used  in 
a  specific  sense:  e.g.  Bede,  Praef.,  i.  23  ;  iii.  8,  22;  iv.  8,  23. 

'  On  Church-scot,  a  church-due  consisting  principally  of  corn,  see 
Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  190 ;  Kemble,  ii.  559 ;  Stevenson's  Chron.  of 
Abingdon,  ii.  437  ;  Thorpe's  Glossary  to  Ancient  Laws. 

^  '  Husl-gengea,'  Laws,  15,  19.  Bede  lamented  the  infrequency  of  Com- 
munion among  Northumbrian  churchmen,  Ep.  to  Egb.  2.  See  council  of 
Clovesho,  747,  c.  23,  urging  more  frequent  Communion.  See  ^Ifric  in 
Johnson's  E.  Engl.  Canons,  i.  404,  where  to  *go  to  housel'  is  to  receive 
the  Host ;  and  ib.  487,  '  to  go  to  housel  thrice  a  year  at  least.'  Compare 
Hamlet,  i.  5,  '  unhousel'd  '  (without  communion). 

'  *  To  be  bishopped '  was  an  old  phrase  for  being  confirmed ;  see  Donne's 
Poems,  p.  173.     On  a  <  bishopson  '  see  above,  p.  269. 

**  See  above,  p.  103.  »  Johnson,  i.  134. 


412  Questions  for  Wilfrid. 

CHAP.  XII.  between  Wilfrid  and  his  adversaries  was  again  stirred  in 
Northumbria.  For  some  time  after  his  return  in  686,  we 
learn  from  his  biographer  that  'peace  and  quietness 
abounded  between  him  and  the  most  wise  king,  with  the 
enjoyment  of  nearly  every  form  of  good.'  But,  by  degrees, 
disagreement  began  to  alternate  with  concord:  and  Eddi 
tells  us,  with  a  rapid  variation  of  metaphors,  that  those 
who  had  caused  the  former  enmity  succeeded  in  rekindling 
the  torch  of  dissension,  and  stirring  the  sea  until  they 
wrecked  the  bark  ^.  Three  grounds  of  difference,  we  are 
told,  came  definitely  to  the  front  'after  five  years'  had 
elapsed  from  Wilfrid's  restoration — that  is,  in  the  latter 
part  of  691. 

The  first  was  a  grievance  of  long  standing:  certain 
property  belonging  to  the  church  of  York  was  unjustly 
detained  in  other  hands  ^. 

The  second  matter  was  of  broader  significance :  it  seems 
that  ever  since  Eadhed  had  returned  from  Lindsey  and 
established  himself  as  bishop  at  Ripon,  there  had  been 
a  desire  on  the  part  of  the  Northumbrian  government  to 
make  that  church  a  permanent  see.  The  prospect  was 
specially  galling  to  Wilfrid.  To  take  from  him  Ripon, 
the  home  of  his  presbyterate  and  of  his  first  years  in  the 
episcopate,  was  to  touch  him  in  the  tenderest  point :  this 
minster  was  dearer  to  him  than  Hexham,  dearer  in  one 
sense  than  York  itself^.  There  was  doubtless  no  day 
in  his  past  life  to  which  he  looked  back  with  greater 
pleasure  than  to  the  day  on  which,  in  the  presence  of  all 
the  magnates  of  Northumbria,  he  had  solemnly  dedicated 
the  basilica;  and,  standing  before  its  altar,  with  his  face 
to  the  assembly,  had  recited  a  list  of  all  the  lands  secured 
to  him  by  royal  grant,  and  of  all  the  sacred  places  which 
the  British  clergy  had  held  and  forsaken^.  When  he 
resumed  the  see  of  York,  he  had  also  recovered  Ripon, 
Eadhed  having  made  way  for  him.  But  now  it  seemed 
that   he   was   himself   to   make   way   for   the    return    of 

'  Eddi,  45. 

"^  Eddi,  *  territoriis  et  possessionibus  suis  injuste  privatur.* 

3  See  Llngard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  139.  *  Above,  p.  268. 


Questions  for  Wilfrid.  413 

Eadhed,  and  the  minster  of  St.  Peter  was  to  be  changed  chap.  xir. 
for  good  into  a  cathedral  church.  Never  again,  if  this 
plan  were  carried  out,  would  he  be  able  to  call  Ripon  his 
own :  the  church  with  its  stately  columns  and  cloisters, 
the  special  treasure  which  it  boasted  in  a  superbly  jewelled 
and  richly  coloured  Gospel-book,  the  very  ground  associated 
with  early  plans  and  hopes,  and  with  not  a  little  of  self- 
restraining  patience,  would  pass  into  other  keeping  ^. 

But,  thirdly,  this  requirement,  to  him  personally  so 
grievous,  was  but  part  of  a  wider  demand.  He  must 
accept,  it  was  said,  '  the  decrees  of  Archbishop  Theodore  ^.' 
What  decrees  ?  Not  the  canons  of  the  Council  of  Hertford, 
to  which  he  had  by  his  deputies  assented  at  the  time. 
Nor,  again,  those  arrangements  which  Theodore  had  made 
'  in  his  last  days,  when  he  invited  all  the  Churches  to 
canonical  peace  and  unanimity ' :  that  is,  apparently,  the 
arragements  by  virtue  of  which  Wilfrid  had  returned  to 
York  in  686.  The  decrees  now  pressed  upon  his  acceptance 
were  '  those  which  Theodore  ordained  in  the  middle  part 
of  his  time,  when  discord  had  arisen '  in  Northumbria  ^ : 
in  other  words,  the  partition  of  the  old  Northumbrian 
diocese,  without  Wilfrid's  consent,  into  several  dioceses, 
according  to  the  original  plan  of  Egfrid  and  Theodore, 
which  would  not  have  ousted  Wilfrid  from  the  church  of 
York,  but  would  have  made  him  one  of  four  bishops  of  the 
Northumbrian  kingdom,  then  including  Lindsey  ;  against 

^  About  forty-three  years  later,  Bede  complained  that  owing  to  the 
*  very  foolish  grants  of  preceding  kings'  to  monastic  communities,  '  it  was 
not  easy  to  find  a  place  where  a  new  episcopal  see  might  be  erected ; ' 
i.  e.  the  most  desirable  places  were  monopolized  by  monasteries.  He 
advised  that  some  monastic  church  should,  by  proper  authority,  be 
turned  into  a  cathedral,  and  the  community  be  permitted  to  choose  the 
bishop,— one  of  themselves,  if  possible,— at  any  rate  from  within  the 
diocese  ;  Ep.  to  Egb.  5. 

2  See  Eddi,  45. 

3  Malmesbury  calls  them  'decrees  which,  when  pronounced  in  the 
middle  period,  are  known  to  have  stirred  up  discord '  ;  G.  P.  iii.  104. 
Eadmer,  ever  loyal  to  Canterbury,  says  that  whereas  no  English  bishop 
could  safely  gainsay,  '  vel  leviter,*  the  decrees  of  the  primate,  those  decrees 
which  Wilfrid  resisted  were  *  ea  quae  .  .  .  ut  fertur,  pro  libitu,  non  pro 
ratione  statuerat '  ;  c.  46.  See  Smith's  Bede,  p.  754,  '  of  which  decrees, 
however,  they  were  not  ignorant  that  Theodore  had  repented.' 


414  Questions  for  Wilfrid. 

CHAP.  XII.  which  partition  he  had  signified  his  intention  to  appeal, 
and  had  been  thereupon  deprived  of  York  itself.  He  was 
now,  in  effect,  called  upon  to  acknowledge  that  this  mode 
of  increasing  the  episcopate  in  Northumbria  had  not  been 
matter  for  protest,  still  less  for  appeal;  and  to  give  up, 
once  for  all,  those  safeguards  under  which,  according  to 
the  Pope's  synodical  judgement,  such  an  increase  might  be 
canonically  secured.  After  his  return  in  686,  he  had 
accepted  what  he  could  get,  the  full  possession  of  the 
diminished  diocese  of  York,  including  his  minster  at  Ripon, 
and  also  the  temporary  government  of  Hexham  and  of 
Lindisfarne,  considered  as  existing  dioceses.  He  had  not 
been  recognized,  in  the  first  instance,  as  the  one  legitimate 
bishop  of  all  Northumbria,  nor  enabled  to  meet  his  brethren 
in  provincial  synod  in  order  to  choose  bishops  for  new 
dioceses,  to  be  then  formed  out  of  his  own.  And  now, 
most  probably  in  consequence  of  something  that  he  had 
done  or  said,  the  king  required  him  to  surrender  definitely 
his  claims  asserted  in  678,  and  aflS.rmed  and  guarded  by 
Rome  in  679,  to  a  control  over  the  diocesan  subdivision  of 
Northumbria.  The  question  was  immediately  connected 
with  the  proposed  severance  of  Ripon  from  York  :  but  it 
really  brought  out  the  entire  difference  between  the 
Northumbrian  authorities  and  the  Roman  Council.  Wilfrid 
held  himself  free,  when  Aldfrid  proffered  a  reconciliation, 
to  waive  for  the  time  a  part  of  his  full  rights;  but  not 
to  abandon  them  wholly  and  in  perpetuity.  Reverence  for 
Rome,  as  he  would  say,  of  itself  forbade  such  a  surrender : 
and  he  said  so  in  plain  words,  which  became  an  occasion 
for  depriving  him  once  more  of  York.  Bosa,  no  doubt, 
returned  to  York  as  bishop ;  and  Eadhed,  perhaps,  resumed 
possession  of  Ripon.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  Wilfrid 
on  this  occasion,  any  more  than  when  he  stood  before  the 
Roman  CounciP,  denied  the  expediency  of  a  plurality  of 
bishops  for  the  North  :  he  had,  on  the  contrary,  admitted 
that  it  might  be  desirable  to  appoint  more  bishops,  and  the 
dispute  was  as  to  the  terms  of  their  appointment,  and  the 
questions  of  order  and  justice  involved  in  Theodore's  decrees. 

*  Above,  p.  333. 


Wilfrid  in  Mercia,  415 

If  we  had  only  Bede's  narrative,  we  should  indeed  know  chap.  xir. 
little  of  many  events  in  Wilfrid's  story.  He  says  nothing 
of  the  exiled  bishop's  attempts,  after  his  release  from 
imprisonment  at  Dunbar,  to  find  a  home  in  Mercia  or  in 
Wessex.  He  says  nothing  of  that  imprisonment  itself^. 
So  on  this  occasion,  it  is  but  incidentally,  in  the  course  of 
chapters  on  the  monastery  of  Whitby  and  on  missions  ^,  Wilfrid  in 
that  he  alludes  to  the  sojourn  of  Wilfrid  in  Mercia  after  ^^^^i^- 
his  second  '  expulsion  '  from  York.  That  sojourn  is  briefly 
described  by  Eddi  as  following  immediately  on  his  refusal 
to  accept  the  terms  proposed  by  Aldf  rid.  *  He  went  to  his 
faithful  friend,  Ethelred  king  of  the  Mercians,  who,  out  of 
reverence  for  the  Apostolic  see,  received  him  with  all 
honour:'  it  was  not  now  as  in  681,  when  Ethelred  com- 
pelled Berthwald,  for  political  reasons,  to  send  Wilfrid  out 
of  his  district.  Every  piece  of  property — and  there  were 
many  such — which  Wilfrid  held  in  the  Midlands,  had,  as 
we  have  seen,  been  restored  to  him  at  Theodore's  request : 
and  now,  when  he  entered  the  Mercian  realm,  episcopal 
work  was  at  once  found  for  him.  While  Saxulf  of  Lich- 
field ^  was  succeeded  by  Hedda,  the  see  of  Leicester  *, 
formerly  held  by  Cuthwin,  was  placed  in  Wilfrid's  keeping ; 
and  he  ranks,  accordingly,  in  Florence's  catalogue,  as  the 
second  of  twenty-three  bishops  of  '  Mid-Anglia  ^.'  One  of 
his  first  episcopal  acts  must  have  been  specially  interesting 
to  him  as  a  Northumbrian.  Bosel,  bishop  of  Worcester, 
was  no  longer  able  to  discharge  his  duties  ^ :  age  or  illness 
had  broken  him  down.  It  was  arranged,  therefore,  that 
he  should  resign,  and  that  another  bishop  should  take  his 
place.  By  an  unanimous  resolution,  a  priest  named  Oftfor 
was  elected :  he  had  been  a  monk  of  Whitby  under  Hilda, 

^  Bede,  iv.  13  ;  v.  19.     See  above,  p.  338. 

^  See  Bede,  iv.  23,  '  per  Vilfridum  beatae  memoriae  antistitem,'  &c. ; 
and  V.  II,  '  Vilfrid  qui  tunc  ...  in  Merciorum  regionibus  exulabat.* 

2  Eddi  makes  Saxulf  s  death  precede  Wilfrid's  Mercian  episcopate.  The 
Chronicle  is  wrong  in  dating  it  a.  d.  705.     The  true  date  is  691. 

*  Not  that  he  was  regularly  settled  there  as  bishop  of  the  place ;  see 
Smith's  Bede,  p.  755,  who,  however,  thinks  that  it  was  Lichfield  which 
was  entrusted  to  him,  between  Saxulf  s  death  and  Hedda's  consecration. 

^  Saxulf  had  for  a  time  held  both  sees. 

•  See  Bede,  iv.  23. 


4i6 


Missions  to  Friesland, 


Consecra 
tion  of 
Oftfor. 


CHAP.  XII.  and,  in  his  desire  of  some  '  more  perfect '  system  of  disci- 
pline, as  Bede  expresses  it,  had  gone  to  study  at  Canterbury 
under  Theodore.  After  some  time  thus  spent,  he  had 
visited  Rome,  and  on  his  return  had  settled  among  the 
Hwiccians  in  Gloucestershire  and  Worcestershire,  still 
governed  by  the  sub -king  Osric.  In  that  district  Oftfor 
preached,  and,  as  Bede  is  careful  to  add,  lived  in  consistency 
with  his  preaching :  and  after  he  had  for  some  time  com- 
mended himself  to  the  estimation  of  the  Hwiccian  Church, 
he  was,  at  Ethelred's  bidding,  consecrated  by  Wilfrid  in 
692,  '  because  no  one  as  yet  was  ordained  bishop  in  place 
of  Theodore  V 

Wilfrid's  troubles  again  bring  us  into  the  circle  of 
missionary  activities.  We  must  go  back  a  little,  and 
observe  that  the  priest  Egbert,  whom  we  last  heard  of 
as  remonstrating  against  Egfrid's  invasion  of  Ireland, 
had  soon  afterwards  conceived  the  idea  of  going  as 
a  missionary  ^  to  some  of  the  German  tribes  '  from  which 
the  Angles  and  Saxons  of  Britain  were  known  to  be 
sprung^.'  Mysterious  intimations,  however,  were  said  to 
have  warned  him  that  he  was  not  to  go  to  the  Continent, 
but  to  '  the  monasteries  of  Columba,  because  their  ploughs 
did  not  go  straight,  and  it  was  his  duty  to  recall  them 
to  the  straight  path*':   he  at  first  neglected  the  alleged 


Missions 
to  Frisia. 


*  See  Ethelred's  grant  of  lands  'to  my  venerable  bishop  Oftfor'  for  the 
churcii  of  St.  Peter  in  Worcester,  Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  35. 

"^  '  Well -descended  men '  among  the  English  of  this  period  'cannot  rest 
till  they  have  wandered  forth  to  carry  the  tidings  of  redemption  into 
distant  and  barbarous  lands;  a  life  of  abstinence  and  hardship,  to  be 
crowned  by  a  martyr's  death,  seems  to  have  been  hungered  and  thirsted 
after  by  the  wealthy  and  noble  ; '  Kemble,  ii.  363.    See  above,  p.  328. 

^  Bede,  v.  9  :  'a  quibus  Angli,'  &c. 

*  'Aratra  eorum  non  recte  incedunt.'  The  story  is  remarkable. 
A  brother  who  had  formerly  attended  on  Boisil  of  Melrose  told  Egbert 
that  Boisil,  '  once  his  most  loving  teacher  and  nourisher,'  had  appeared 
to  him  in  a  dream,  and  given  him  this  message.  '  Egbert  bade  the  monk 
say  nothing  about  it,  '  ne  forte  illusoria  esset  visio  ; '  an  indication  that 
stories  of  this  kind  were  scrutinized.  '  But  while  silently  pondering  the 
matter,  he  feared  it  was  true  :  yet  still  he  would  not  abandon  his  purpose 
of  going  to  teach  the  heathen.'  The  '  brother'  again  came,  and  said  that 
Boisil  had  rebuked  him  for  having  given  the  message  negligently.  Again 
Egbert  replied  as  before  ;  and  '  though  thus  assured  of  the  vision,  he 
nevertheless  attempted  to  begin  his  journey.' 


I 


Failure  of  Widbert's  mission.  417 

oracle,  and  had  actually  prepared  to  embark,  when  a  storm  chap.  xir. 
destroyed  no  small  part  of  the  ship's  cargo.  Egbert  then 
abandoned  his  hopes :  a  friend  of  his  named  Wictbert,  who  Wictbert. 
had  been  a  hermit  for  many  years  in  Ireland,  attempted  to 
make  some  impression  on  the  Frisians  to  whom  Wilfrid 
had  preached  with  such  success  about  ten  years  before.  In 
this  good  work  he  laboured,  but  in  vain.  The  Frisian  chief  ^ 
Radbod  was  not  like  Adalgis :  he  did  not,  indeed,  prohibit 
the  preaching  of  Christianity,  and  in  after-days  he  yielded 
so  far  to  the  exhortations  of  bishop  Wulframn  of  Sens  as 
to  come  to  the  very  edge  of  the  baptismal  font,  and  only 
drew  back  when,  in  reply  to  his  sudden  question,  the  bishop 
told  him  that  his  ancestors  were  undoubtedly  among  the 
lost  ^ : — but  still  he  did  not  hearken  to  Wictbert^  who  had 
to  accept  disappointment,  return  to  Ireland,  and  confine 
himself  to  the  work  of  'edifying  his  neighbours  by  his 
example,  since  he  had  failed  to  win  strangers  to  the  faith  ^.' 
Two  years  having  been  spent  in  the  effort  thus  abandoned, 
Egbert  looked  about  for  other  instruments,  and  found  a 
mighty  one  in  Willibrord,  a  pupil  of  his  own,  and  like  him  Willi- 
of  Northumbrian  birth  ^,  who  had  spent  some  time  as  a  boy    ^^^  ' 


'  Bede  calls  him  a  king  ;  v.  9.  So  Alcuin,  Vit.  Willibr.  i.  6.  Alcuin 
says  that  he  received  Willibrord  kindly,  but  was  hardened  against  his 
preaching,  until,  after  a  bold  warning  from  the  bishop,  he  said  frankly, 
*  I  see  that  you  do  not  fear  my  threats,  and  you  speak  as  you  act  ; '  Vit. 
Will.  i.  9,  10  (Op.  ii.  188).  Boniface  in  753  told  pope  Stephen  III  that 
the  bishop  of  Cologne  had  not  fulfilled  his  duty  of  preaching  to  the 
Frisians,  and  that  '  pagana  mansit  gens  Frisonum '  until  Willibrord 
came  ;  Ep.  90. 

^  Vit.  S.  Wulfr.  :  'Certum  est  damnationis  accepisse  sententiam.' 
Whereupon  Riidbod  '  pedem  a  fonte  retraxit,'  saying,  *  he  could  not  go 
without  the  company  of  his  predecessors,  and  sit  down  with  a  few  poor 
folk  in  that  heavenly  kingdom  ;  *  see  Maclear,  Apostles  of  Med.  Eur.  p.  106. 

^  Bede,  v.  9  :  *  Tunc  re  versus,'  &c.  See  above,  p.  328.  For  other  cases 
of  missionary  failure,  see  p.  343,  and  Hardwick,  Ch.  Hist.  M.  Ages,  p.  118, 
Friedrich  in  Iceland  ;  p.  129,  Gottschalk  king  of  the  Wends,  who  after 
twenty  years  of  labour  was  murdered  by  his  subjects  ;  p.  229,  Meinhard 
in  Livonia.  Olga  failed  with  her  son,  but  succeeded  with  her  grandson  ; 
p.  130. 

*  His  father  Wilgis  became  a  hermit  on  a  promontory  in  the  Humber. 
While  yet  an  infant,  Willibrord  was  given  over  by  his  pious  mother  to 
the  brethren  at  Ripon.  See  Alcuin,  Vit.  Willibr.  i.  i,  3.  See  above, 
p.  201. 

E  e 


4i8  Mission  of  IVillibrord  • 

CHAP.  XII.  in  Wilfrid's  abbey  at  Ripon,  and  had  gone  to  Ireland  at  the 
age  of  twenty,  partly  from  desire  of  *  a  still  stricter  life,' 
and  partly  in  order  to  profit  by  Irish  learning.  He  now, 
in  his  thirty-third  year  ^,  accepted  the  call  to  go  to  Frisia, 
and  set  forth  with  twelve  companions  in  690  ^.  One  seems 
to  see  him,  tall  and  dignified  in  person,  with  signal  attrac- 
tions in  the  grave  beauty  of  his  face,  and  the  cheerful 
kindness  of  his  speech  and  manner^.  The  party  landed 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Rhine,  in  the  harbour  of  Catwic*, 
visited  the  old  Roman  town  of  Trajectum,  'the  Passage,' 
Trecht  or  Utrecht,  where  six  years  later  Willibrord  was 
to  fix  his  archbishopric,  and  then  finding  Radbod  and  his 
Frisians,  as  Wictbert  had  left  them,  in  the  '  foulness  of 
Pagan  customs^,'  'turned  aside  to  Pippin  duke  of  the 
Franks,'  called  Pippin  of  Heristal,  the  great  Austrasian 
who,  four  years  previously,  had  virtually  put  an  end  to 
the  Merovingian  period  of  '  chaos,'  and  was  '  ruling  unques- 
tioned over  the  whole  Frankish  race  ^J  He,  the  true  founder 
of  the  new  sovereignty  which  became  imperial  in  the  person 
of  his  great-grandson,  anticipated  Charles  himself  in  his 
readiness  to  promote  Christian  and  ecclesiastical  activity. 
Even  as  Boniface,  many  years  later,  found  '  the  patronage ' 

*  Alcuin,  Vit.  Will.  i.  5.     See  Frobenius  on  Vit.  i.  23  ;  Bede,  v.  10. 

"  Frobenius  (Alcuin,  ii.  185)  and  Lingard  (A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  330)  give  this 
date.  On  the  fondness  shown  by  saints  for  the  apostolic  number  of 
twelve,  see  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  299,  and  above,  p.  i6t. 

^  Alcuin,  Vit.  Will.  i.  23  :  '  statura  decens.'&c.  His  courage  was  of  the 
heroic  type  ;  see  the  story  of  the  Fositeland  well,  and  that  of  his  assault 
on  the  idol  ;  ib.  i.  10,  13.  See  Maclear,  p.  loi.  But  he  gently  restrained 
his  attendants  from  punishing  an  insult  offered  to  him  (ib.  i.  14),  and 
*  ut  erat  mitissimus,'  gave  wine  from  his  flask  to  poor  men  asking 
alms  (i6\ 

*  Alb  Butler,  Nov.  7. 

'  Alcuin,  Vit.  Will.  i.  6.  9.  Cp.  Bede,  iii.  21,  *  sorde  idololatriae. ' 
Radbod's  '  heart'  proved  '  stony.'     He  died  in  720. 

^  Kitchin,  Hist.  Fr.  i.  95,  99.  'He  had  two' weapons,  the  sword  and 
then  the  monkish  missionaries.*  The  victory  of  Pippin  over  the 
Keustrians,  at  Testry,  was  in  687.  Distinguish  (i)  Pippin  the  elder, 
Austrasian  'mayor  of  the  palace':  (2)  his  grandson  Pippin  of  Heristal, 
who  held  the  same  office,  rose  to  be  '  duke  of  the  Franks,'  and  became 
father  of  Charles  Martel  :  (3)  this  Pippin's  grandson,  Pippin  the  Short 
or  the  Little,  brother  of  Carloman,  father  of  Charles  the  Great,  and  king 
(consecrated  as  such  by  St.  Boniface)  in  752. 


and  of  Swidbert.  419 

of  another  '  prince  of  the  Franks '  indispensable  for  his  chap.  xu. 
episcopal  success  ^  Willibrord  received  a  glad  welcome 
from  Pippin,  who  'sent  him  to  preach  to  the  heathen 
people  of  Hither  Frisia^/  the  land  of  the  Meuse,  and 
supported  his  work  'with  sovereign  authority,  conferring 
great  favours  on  those  who  were  willing  to  receive  the 
faith,  insomuch  that  by  aid  of  Divine  grace,  the  mission- 
aries in  a  short  space  converted  many  from  idolatry  ^.' 
Willibrord  lost  no  time  in  repairing  to  Rome,  to  obtain  the 
'licence  and  blessing'  of  Pope  Sergius  for  his  missionary 
enterprise ;  and  during  his  absence  '  the  brethren  who  were 
in  Frisia  chose  one  of  their  own  number  to  be  ordained  for 
them  as  bishop  ^!  His  name  was  Swidbert  ^,  '  a  man  of  Swidbert. 
virtuous  life  and  humble  in  heart ; '  and  at  the  request  of 
the  missionaries,  there  being  still  no  archbishop  at  Canter- 
bury, Wilfrid  performed  the  consecration  in  693.  The 
new  bishop  returned  to  the  Continent,  and  laboured  with 
much  success  among  the  Boructuarians  or  Bructerians  in 
Rhenish  Prussia :  but  after  that  people  had  been  expelled 
by  the  Saxons,  he  took  refuge  with  Pippin,  who,  at  his 
wife's  request,  gave  Swidbert  land  for  a  monastery  on  the 
isle  of  Kaiserwerth,  then  called  'On-the-shore^,'  where  he 
led  a  very  ascetic  life,  and  died  in  713.  Bede  also  dwells  Martyr- 
on  the  touching  story  '^  of  two  Anglian  priests,  called  ^^j^g^t^^o 
respectively  the  Black  and  the  Fair  Hewald.  They  had  Hewalds. 
spent  years  of  study  and  devotion  in  Ireland^,  when  the 
examples  of  Willibrord  and  his  companions  led  them,  with 
some  others  ^,  into  Saxony.     They  were  admitted  into  the 

^  Bonif,  Ep.  12.  Cp.  Ep.  ii,  Charles  Martel's  letter  of  protection  for 
Boniface. 

2  He  had  recently  won  this  land  from  Radbod  ;  Bede,  v.  lo. 

2  Bede,  v.  lo.  *  Bede,  v.  1 1  :  '  Quo  tempore  fratres,'  &c. 

'  Ann.  SS.  Bened.  iii.  239  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  225;  Lingard,  A.-S. 
Ch.  ii.  334.  Alcuin  (de  Pontif.  Ebor.  1073)  associates  a  priest  called  Vira 
with  Swidbert. 

*  Bede,  v.  11.     His  *  heirs'  owned  the  monastery  in  731. 

'  Bede,  v.  10  ;  '  Horum  secuti  exempla.*  Neither  Bede  nor  Alcuin  (Pont. 
Ebor.  T043)  hints  that  they  were  brothers,  as  Alban  Butler  and  Lingard 
infer.    Of  the  two,  he  of  the  black  hair  was  the  more  scholarly. 

*  *  InHibernia  multo  tempore  pro  aeternapatriaexulaverant,' like  Egbert. 
^  One  of  their  '  socii '  was  Tilmon,  a  man  of  noble  English  birth,  who 

had  been  a  thane  ('miles '),  and  had  become  a  monk  ;  Bede,  v.  10. 


420  Martyrdom  of  the  Hewalds. 

CHAP.  XII.  house  of  a  village  headman  \  who  promised  to  send  them 
on  to  the  ealdorman^  of  the  district; — in  the  meantime 
they  '  devoted  themselves  to  prayer  and  psalmody,  and 
daily  offered  to  God  the  sacrifice  of  the  salutary  Victim, 
having  with  them  sacred  vessels,  and  a  hallowed  table  to 
serve  as  an  altar  ^.'  These  mystic  rites  aroused  suspicion*: 
if  the  Angles  were  allowed  to  have  speech  with  the  ealdor- 
man,  'they  might  draw  him  away  from  the  gods  to  their 
newfangled  Christian  religion,  and  so  the  whole  province 
might  ere  long,  perforce,  be  turned  from  the  old  ways  to 
the  new.'  So  they  suddenly  'fell  upon'  the  two  priests, 
'and  slew  Fair  Hewald  with  a  rapid  sword-stroke,  but 
Black  Hewald  with  long  tortures  and  horrible  dismember- 
ment ;'  then  cast  the  martyrs'  corpses  into  the  Rhine.  Their 
blood  was  promptly  avenged  by  the  ealdorman,  who  put  to 
death  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  township,  and  burned  their 
houses  to  the  ground.  The  bodies  were  recovered,  and 
buried  by  Pippin's  orders  at  Cologne.  The  day  of  their 
martyrdom  was  the  3rd  of  October;  the  year,  probably, 
695  ^.  It  may  be  added  here  that  Willibrord  was  conse- 
crated archbishop  of  the  Frisians  by  the  hands  of  Pope 
Sergius,  in  St.  Caecilia's  ^  at  Rome,  on  the  festival  of  that 
saint,  November  22,  696 :  his  name  being  changed  by  the 

^  Villicus,  the  'town-reeve,'  or  governor,  of  a  *  vicus.'  See  Stubbs, 
Const.  Hist.  i.  47,  93.     See  above,  p.  313. 

^  Bede  says  that  these  *  Old  Saxons '  had  no  king,  but  a  number  of 
*  satraps '  (or  governors  of  districts)  v^ho,  in  war  time,  cast  lots  which 
should  lead  the  army.  These  were  '  dukes  or  ealdormen '  ;  Freeman, 
Growth  of  Engl.  Constit.  p.  34.  See  Stubbs,  1.  c.  The  biographer  of 
St.  Lebuin  says  (Pertz,  Mon.  Germ.  Hist.  ii.  361)  that  every  Saxon 
'pagus'  (or  '■  hundred,'  Stubbs,  i.  96  had  its  'princeps'  (see  lb.  29).  We 
find  'satraps'  mentioned  after  *  dukes '  in  Wihtred's  Privilege;  Haddan 
and  Stubbs,  iii.  242. 

^  Bede,  v.  10:  'Victimae  salutaris.'     See  above,  pp.  ir6,  167. 

*  Probably  the  celebration  of  the  Eucharist  seemed  to  them  a  'magicalis 
scena ' :  see  Vit,  S.  Lebuini,  where  the  Saxons  are  made  to  ask,  '  Quidnam 
est  illud  phantasma  vagabundum,  quod  suis  praestigiis  alienat  mentes?' 
&c.  ;  and  forthwith  burn  Lebuin's  '  little  oratory.* 

'  Lingard,  A.-S,  Ch.  ii.  334.  So  Alb.  Butler,  '  most  probably.'  He  adds, 
*■  They  are  honoured  through  all  Westphalia  ; '  Lives  of  Saints,  Oct.  3. 

"  So  Bede,  v.  11  :  'Ordinatus  est  autem,'  &c.  Alcuin  says,  at  St.  Peter's 
(Vit.  1.  7) ;  a  not  unnatural  mistake.  St.  Caecilia's  in  the  Trastevere 
was  founded  by  Urban  I  in  the  third  century. 


Wtlltbrordy  missionary  Archbishop.      421 

Pope  to  Clement  ^.  He  stayed  only  a  fortnight  in  Rome,  chap.  xn. 
and  then  returned  to  his  mission-field,  where  he  received 
from  Pippin  'a  place  for  his  episcopal  chair'  at  Utrecht, 
which  Bede,  here  referring  to  it,  calls  Wiltaburg^.  Near 
this  royal  fortress  he  built  a  cathedral  church  and  monastery, 
called  that  of  Our  Saviour  3,  in  imitation  of  the  Lateran 
basilica.  His  episcopate,  which  included  among  its  energetic 
onslaughts  on  heathenism  a  desecration  of  the  fountain  and 
cattle  belonging  to  the  idol  Fosite  in  Heligoland*,  had 
lasted  thirty-five  years  when  Bede  wrote  '^y  and  was  closed 
by  his  death  in  his  eighty-second  year  ^,  A.  d.  739.  It  was 
a  grand  career  of  'manifold  contests  in  the  heavenly 
warfare^,'  during  the  whole  of  which,  says  his  illustrious 
biographer,  '  so  long  as  he  lived  with  us,  he  ceased  not  to 
labour  in  the  love  of  Christ  ^.' 

Such  was  the  missionary  spirit  in  these  typical  English 

^  For  other  such  cases,  see  p.  199. 

2  Cp.  Vit.  S.  Lebuini,  Pertz,  Mon.  Germ.  Hist.  ii.  361  :  '  Castrum 
Wiltenburg  antiquitus  dictum,  modo  vero  Trajectum.'  Afterwards  the 
monastery  at  Utrecht,  under  its  abbot  Gregory,  included  a  flourishing 
*  school,'  whence  missionaries  went  forth.  See  Vit.  S.  Liudgeri,  i.  9  ; 
Pertz,  ii.  407. 

^  Boniface,  Ep.  90 :   'In  honore  Sancti  Salvatorls.'     Above,  p.  61. 

*  Alcuin,  Vit.  Will.  i.  10.  No  one  might  touch  the  cattle,  nor,  save  in 
silence,  drink  of  the  well.  W^illibrord  bade  his  companions  kill  some  of 
the  cattle  for  food,  and  baptized  three  men  in  the  well  '  cum  invocatione 
Sanctae  Trinitatis.'  He  thus  drew  down  on  his  party  the  fury  of  the 
heathen  islanders  :  one  of  his  band  was  marked  by  lot  for  slaughter,  and 
killed.     Cp.  Vit.  S.  Liudg.  19.     See  above,  p.  78. 

^  Bede,  v.  11,  says,  *  he  is  still  sighing  after  his  heavenly  reward.'  In 
Vit.  Cuthb.  44,  he  speaks  of  a  '  clericus  Wilbrordi  *  who  paid  a  visit  to 
Lindisfarne. 

«  Alcuin,  Vit.  Will.  ii.  24.  St.  Boniface  says  that  he  preached  fifty 
years  (a  round  number)  in  Frisia  ;  Ep.  90. 

'  Bede,  v.  11. 

8  Alcuin,  Vit.  Will.  i.  23.  See  the  Judicium  dementis,  a  series  of 
twenty  rules,  in  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  226.  It  has  some  remarkable 
points  :  it  forbids  any  one  to  fast  and  take  another  man's  sins  on  him, 
for  hire.  Offerings  '  de  praeda '  cannot  be  received.  He  who,  by 
negligence,  works  or  shaves  himself,  &c.  on  Sunday,  and  he  who  com- 
municates after  eating,  must  do  penance  for  a  week.  He  who  '  denies 
God  without  compulsion '  must  do  penance  ten  years.  Prayer  may  be 
made  for  the  soul  of  a  demoniac  suicide.  But  a  man  who  cannot  recover 
his  wife  from  the  enemy  may,  after  a  year,  marry  another  j  and  the 
wife,  if  afterwards  set  free,  may  do  the  like. 


l)nrv, 


422     Bertwaldj  archbishop  of  Canterbury. 

CHAP.  xri.  Christians  towards  the  close  of  the  first  century  of  the 
Boitwald,  English  Church.     It  is  now  time  to  see  how  the  chief  seat 
ot  Canter-  in  that  Churcli  was  filled,  after  the  vacancy  which  had 
caused  the  application  to  Wilfrid  on  behalf  of  Swidbert. 
As  we  have  seen,  Wihtred,  *  the  legitimate  king  of  Kent  ^ ,' 
was  obliged  for  a  while  to  share  the  kingdom  with  Sweb- 
hard  ^ :  and  these  two  princes  are  mentioned  by  Bede  ^  as 
concurring  in    the    election,  on  the    ist   of   July,  692,  of 
Bertwald,  otherwise  Brihtwald,  abbot  of  the  monastery  in 
that  old  Roman  town  of  Reculver  whither  Ethelbert  had 
retired  from   Canterbury  in  597,  and  where   Egbert  had 
enabled  '  Bass  the  mass-priest '  to  build  a  minster  in  669  *. 
Bertwald  was  'learned  in  the  Scriptures,  and  thoroughly 
conversant  with  ecclesiastical  and  monastic  rules,  although,' 
as  Bede  adds, '  he  could  not  be  compared  to  his  predecessor.' 
What  we  first  hear  of  as  to  his  conduct  is  not  much  in  his 
favour.    It  seems  that  he  declined  to  be  consecrated  by  any 
of  his  future  sufiragans  ^ ;  and  this  led  to  a  year's  further 
delay.    It  was  not  until  St.  Peter's  festival  in  the  following 
year,  693,  that  he  received  consecration  from  Godwin,  arch- 
bishop of  Lyons,  whom  Bede  calls  '  metropolitan  bishop  of 
Gaul ' ;  and  in  fact,  although  it  was  not  until  the  eleventh 
century  that  the  church  of  Lyons  '  obtained  the  primacy ' 
over  three  other  metropolitan  churches  ^,  we  find  its  bishop 
signing  before  those  of  Vienne,  Rouen,  and  Sens,  at  the 

^  So  Hen.  Hunt,  calls  him  ;  Hist.  iv.  6.     See  above,  p.  405. 

^  Elmham  says  that  Swebhard  was  the  son  of  *  Sebba '  king  of  East- 
Saxons  (p.  235),  made  himself  king  of  Kent  by  violence  (p.  231  \  and  gave 
a  charter  to  Minster  (ib.).     But  the  charter  is  dubious. 

3  Bede,  v.  8. 

*  Chron.  a.  669.  See  Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  21  :  king  Lothere  grants 
land  in  Thanet,  called  '  Westaney,'  'to  thee,  Bercuald,  and  to  thy 
monastery,'  with  consent  of  Theodore  and  Edric,  at  Reculver,  in  May, 
679.  Bertwald  was  sometimes  confounded  with  Beorwald  abbot  of 
Glastonbury,  as  by  Malmesbury  in  his  Be  Ailtiq.  Glaston.  Eccl.  (Gale, 
Script,  i.  308)  :  '  Iste  Beorwald,  transactis  decem  annis  in  regimine 
Glastoniae,  Cantuariensis  archiepiscopus  fuit.'  But  Beorwald  was  abbot 
while  Bertwald  was  archbishop  ;  Bonif.  Ep.  104. 

^  On  this,  see  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  229. 

*  Neale,  Essays  on  Liturgiology,  p.  296.  Gregory  of  Tours  calls 
Nicetius  of  Lyons  a  patriarch  ;  H.  Fr.  v.  21.  For  Godwin,  cp.  Gall. 
Christ,  iv.  50. 


Death  of  Bishop  Erkenwald,  423 

council  of  Chalon,  about  650  ^  It  is  interesting  to  observe  chap.  xii. 
that  our  episcopal  succession,  inaugurated  at  Aries,  and 
renewed  at  Kome,  was  now  reinforced  from  the  illustrious 
see  of  St.  Irenaeus^.  On  Sunday  the  31st  of  August,  the 
throne  which  had  been  nearly  three  years  vacant  in  the 
basilica  of  Canterbury  received  its  new  occupant  ^.  Work 
for  him  was  not  wanting,  and  we  find  him  joining  with 
King  Ethelred  and  several  bishops,  including  those  of 
Worcester,  Lichfield,  Hereford,  Elmham,  Rochester,  and — 
which  is  observable — Wilfrid,  now  of  Leicester,  together 
with  Alric,  probably  of  Dunwich,  and  another  whose  name 
is  lost,  in  witnessing  a  grant  of  land  for  a  nunnery  by 
Oshere,  the  new  Hwiccian  under-king,  the  date  of  which  is 
693  *.  This  proves  that  Oftfor's  short  episcopate  extended 
at  least  to  the  latter  part  of  this  year :  and  Gebmund,  whose 
death  is  referred  to  the  same  year  by  the  Chronicle,  appears 
from  better  evidence  to  have  survived  until  696  ^. 

It  is  not  quite  certain,  but  it  is  probable,  that  the  year  of  Death  of 
Bertwald's  arrival  was  the  year  of  the  death  of  the  saintly  ^ald  ^^^^^" 
bishop  Erkenwald.     He  had  held  the  see  of  London  from 
675 :  he  is  commonly  supposed  to  have  died  on  the  30th  of 


^  Mansi,  x.  1193.     Hefele,  iv.  463,  E.  T. 

^  When  Bertwald  arrived,  he  found  at  least  three  bishops  in  office  who 
had  been  consecrated  by  Theodore, — Heddi,  Bosa,  and  John  :  and  Heddi, 
as  bishop  of  Winchester,  must  surely  have  taken  part  in  the  consecration 
of  Tobias  of  Rochester,  who  would  naturally  be  associated  with  the  arch- 
bishop in  the  consecration  of  Daniel,  from  which  the  line  descends  to 
archbishop  Jaenbert  in  766.  Cp.  Bp.  Stubbs,  Registr.  Angl.  pp.  4-1 1.  Else- 
where he  suggests  that  John  may  have  assisted  in  Daniel's  consecration  : 
Apost.  Succ.  in  Ch.  Engl.  p.  21.     See  above,  pp.  245,  254. 

^  The  '  letters  of  Sergius '  to  kings  Ethelred,  Aldfrid,  and  Aldwulf,  and 
to  *  the  bishops  throughout  Britain,'  exhorting  them  to  receive  Bertwald, 
are,  like  others  given  by  Malmesbury,  very  questionable.  The  tone  of 
this  series  of  letters  suggests  that  they  were  written  at  Canterbury  in 
order  to  magnify  the  archbishopric  in  connexion  with  Rome.  The  letter 
to  the  king  is  suspicious  even  in  its  address  :  it  omits  the  West-Saxon 
king  and  names  the  East- Anglian. 

*  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  41  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  232.  Oshere's  son  Ethel- 
ward,  *  subregulus,'  with  king  Kenred's  consent,  granted  land  at 
Ombersley  to  bishop  Egwin  for  Evesham  in  706.  See  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  64  ; 
above,  p.  349. 

^  See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  241.  Gebmund  appears  at  the  Witena- 
gemot  of  Berghamstede  in  696. 


424 


Piety  and  death 


Death  of 

King 

Sebbi. 


CHAP.  xii.  April,  693  \  '  He  was  regarded  in  London  as  an  eminent 
saint/ — so  says  Malmesbury,  who  adds  that  his  successors 
for  several  generations  '  lie  under  the  cloud  of  obscurity,  so 
that  even  their  tombs  are  not  known ' :  it  is  thought  a  great 
thing,  he  adds,  among  the  inhabitants  to  know  even  their 
names  ^.  The  first  of  these  undistinguished  prelates  was 
Waldhere,  who  received  in  694  no  less  a  postulant  for  the 
monastic  habit  than  his  own  East-Saxon  king,  Sebbi.  This 
prince,  the  son  of  Seward  ^  one  of  the  Pagan  sons  of  King 
Sabert,  must  have  been  far  advanced  in  life  when,  after 
thirty  years  of  kingship,  he  was  attacked  by  an  illness 
which  seemed  the  signal  of  approaching  death.  He  had 
been  through  all  those  years  a  devout  Christian:  at  the 
beginning  of  his  reign,  he  and  those  East-Saxons  who  were 
under  him,  in  contrast  with  his  nephew  and  colleague 
Sighere,  had  held  fast  the  faith  under  the  trial  of  pesti- 
lence ^ :  ever  since,  he  had  been  a  man  of  prayer  and 
almsdeeds,  and  would  even  have  followed  the  perilous 
example  of  Sigebert  the  Learned,  and  given  up  his  crown 
in   order   to   become  a  monk,  had  not  his  wife  steadily 


*  Stubbs,  Registr.  p.  3.  Another  account  would  give  him  only  eleven 
years ;  Alb.  Butler,  April  30.  Another  prolongs  his  life  to  697  ;  see 
Dugdale,  Hist.  St.  Paul's,  p.  215.  It  was  said  that  the  clergy  of  St.  Paul's 
and  the  monks  of  Chertsey  contended  as  to  the  place  of  his  burial.  The 
mediaeval  account  (Dugdale,  Hist.  St.  Paul's,  p.  290)  which  commits  the 
blunder  of  calling  London  a  ^  metropolitan '  church,  gives  a  lively  picture 
of  the  quarrel :  the  Londoners  forcibly  carry  off  the  corpse  from  Barking, 
despite  the  cry  of  the  Chertsey  monks,  *  He  was  our  abbot ! '  The  rain 
having  swollen  the  river  which  they  must  pass,  the  monks  interpret  it  as 
a  Divine  warning.  The  Londoners  doggedly  answer,  '  We  will  go  through 
an  armed  host,  we  will  besiege  strong  cities,  ere  we  lose  our  patron  ! ' 
A  disciple  of  Erkenwald  preaches  charity,  and  suggests  prayer  for  a  sign  : 
the  waters  divide,  the  weather  clears  up,  the  corpse  is  borne  in  triumph 
to  St.  Paul's.  He  was  buried  at  first  in  the  nave  of  his  church  ;  in  the 
later  cathedral  his  shrine  was  in  the  Lady-chapel.  See  Dugdale,  p.  74  ; 
Milman,  Annals  of  St.  Paul's,  p.  n  ;  and  Dr.  Sparrow  Simpson's  Chapters 
in  the  History  of  Old  St.  Paul's,  pp.  20,  89. 

2  Malmesb.  G.  Pontif.  ii.  73. 

^  Florence,  app.  He  was  therefore  the  brother  of  Sigebert  the  Little, 
and  a  kinsman  of  Sigebert  the  Good.  See  a  grant,  by  '  Hodilredus  parens 
Sebbi,'  to  the  abbess  of  '■  Beddanhaam,'  witnessed  by  Sebbi,  Erkenwald, 
and  Wilfrid,  in  Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  39. 

*  See  above,  pp.  238,  247. 


of  King  Sebbi,  425 

refused  her  consent  to  such  a  separation  ^.  But  now,  at  chap.  xh. 
last,  when  he  said  to  her,  '  Let  us  even  at  this  close  of  our 
wedded  life  devote  ourselves  to  God's  service  2,  when  we 
can  no  longer  enjoy,  or  rather  serve,  the  world,'  she  yielded 
reluctantly  to  his  desire.  He  '  took  the  habit '  accordingly 
before  the  bishop,  and  brought  with  him  a  large  sum  to  be 
spent  on  the  poor,  reserving  nothing  for  himself.  His 
sickness  increased,  and  brought  with  it  that  dread  of  the 
last  enemy  which  has  often  been  permitted  to  burden  the 
spirit  of  a  faithful  servant  of  God,  But,  as  it  was  with 
Johnson,  with  the  Mere  Angelique,  with  Maria  Theresa, 
with  Charles  Wesley,  so  it  was  with  Sebbi  when  the 
supreme  moment  really  drew  near.  He  had  begged  W  aid- 
here  to  visit  him  at  his  palace  in  London.  'What  if  he 
were  to  say,  or  even  by  gesture  express,  in  the  agony  of 
death,  something  unworthy  of  his  character  ^ '?  Would  the 
bishop  promise  to  come,  when  the  hour  had  arrived,  and 
assist  him  in  his  last  struggle,  allowing  no  one  else,  save 
two  of  his  attendant  thanes,  to  be  present?'  Waldhere 
willingly  undertook  to  do  so :  soon  afterwards,  the  old  man 
had  a  dream  which  persuaded  him  that  he  should  have 
a  quiet  departure  ^ ;  and  he  died  at  3  p.m.  on  the  third  day 
afterwards,  'as  if  gently  falling  asleep.'  He  was  buried 
in  the  church  of  St.  Paul  ^,  and  succeeded  by  his  two  sons 
Sighard  and  Swefred  ^. 

^  Bede,  iv.  ii  :  'Erat  enim  religiosis  actibus,*  &c.  In  Ireland,  Aodh 
king  of  Leinster  had  died  as  abbot  and  bishop  of  Kildare  in  638  :  and 
Finnachta  the  Festive,  arch-king,  '  became  a  cleric '  for  a  year  in  688 
(Four  Mast.,  Tighernach). 

2  Again  we  observe  the  unhealthy  restriction  of  this  phrase,  see  p.  197. 

^  '•  Personae,'  meaning,  of  his  character  as  a  king. 

*  He  seemed  to  see  three  men  in  bright  clothing  approach  him.  One 
sat  down  before  his  bed,  and  said  to  the  others  who  were  still  standing, 
and  who  asked  as  to  Sebbi's  condition,  that  his  soul '  would  depart  on  the 
third  day,  without  any  pain,  and  amid  a  great  splendour  of  light.' 

^  He  had  learned  from  St.  Paul,  says  Bede,  '  caelestia  sperare.' 

^  Swefred,  or,  properly,  Swebred,  united  with  '  Paeogthath  cum  licentia 
iEdelredi  regis  comis  (comes)*  in  giving  lands  at  Twickenham  to 
bishop  Waldhere,  June  13,  704  ;  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  59.  The  charter  begins 
*  Quamvis  solus  sermo  sufficeret  ad  testimonium,  attamen  pro  cautella' 
{sic)  '■  futurorum  temporum,'  &c.  It  is  witnessed  by  Kenred,  who  had 
just  succeeded  Ethelred  as  *  king  of  Merciaus.' 


426  EgwiHy  bishop  of  Worcester. 

CHAP.  XII.  A  few  months,  perhaps,  before  the  death  of  the '  bishoplike 
Egwin,  king,'  Oftfor  of  Worcester  died  about  the  end  of  693  \  and 
bishop  of  ^^g  succeeded  by  a  prelate  whom  Bede,  to  the  surprise  of 
William  of  Malmesbury  ^,  passes  by  in  silence,  but  who  was 
afterwards  venerated  as  St.  Egwin.  He  was  of  princely 
birth",  and,  like  Wilfrid  and  Benedict  Biscop,  had  at  an  early 
age  renounced  all  secular  prospects,  and  in  due  time  entered 
the  priesthood.  His  biographer  tells  us  that  he  had  much 
work  to  do  in  reclaiming  the  people  of  his  diocese  from 
heathenish  observances  and  heathenish  license.  They  would 
retain  some  practices  which  were  essentially  idolatrous*; 
and  they  would  not  conform  to  Christian  rules  of  purity. 
He  '  spoke  to  them  repeatedly,'  and  usually  in  tones  of 
stern  rebuke  ^.  The  obstinate  natures  which  his  admoni- 
tions could  not  bend  were  the  more  embittered  against  him : 
we  are  told  that  he  was  accused  ^  before  King  Ethelred,  and 
deprived  of  his  bishopric,  and  also  denounced  to  the  Pope, 
and  that  he  thereupon  repaired  to  Rome  '^,  was  received  with 

*  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  232. 

^  Malmesb.  G.  Pontif.  iv.  160.     He  could  not  account  for  it. 
'  See  his  'Life '  in  Ann.  SS.  Bened.  iii.  331,  and  in  Chron.  Abbatiae  de 
Evesham  (Rolls  Series),  p.  3  ff.     Cp.  Alb.  Butler,  Jan.  11. 

*  See  above,  pp.  80,  238.  Cf.  Elton,  Origins  of  Engl.  Hist.  p.  390. 
*  Many  Old-English  popular  ceremonies  were  evidently  survivcils  from 
heathen  times,  altered  in  some  cases  to  adapt  them  to  the  seasons  of  the 
Church'  (e.g.  the  boar's  head  at  the  Yule  feast)  'and  in  others  bearing 
more  openly  the  marks  of  their  original  paganism '  (e.  g.  dances  with 
invocation  of  Woden  and  Fricge,  '  the  Aphrodite  of  the  North,  the 
female  form  of  Fr^a;*  Kemble,  Saxons,  i.  362). 

^  Usually,  we  infer  from  his  '  Life,'  c.  13,  he  was  '  pleasant  in  speech.' 
^  The  common  people,  'eum  paullatim  conjecturis  et  adinventionibus 
et  rumoribus  malis  diffamans  .  .  .  ab  episcopatu  eum  expulit.     Permisit 
potestas  primatis,  et  admisit  hoc  excitatus  contra  eum   livor   regius  ; ' 
Chron.  Evesh.  p.  5. 

^  Here  comes  in  the  wild  legend  of  his  having  loaded  his  feet  as  in 
penitence  ('  because  he  did  not  deny  that  he  was  a  sinner  in  God's  sight') 
with  chains,  the  key  of  which  he  flung  into  the  Avon  :  when  he  reached 
Rome,  his  servants  bought  a  large  fish  for  food,  and  within  it  the  key 
appeared.  The  pope  heard  of  this,  and,  when  he  saw  Egwin,  asked 
absolution  and  blessing  from  him,  instead  of  imparting  them  to  him,  &c. 
The  pope  is  called  Constantino  ;  but  Constantino  was  not  pope  until 
708,  when  Egwin  went  to  Rome  with  king  Kenred.  Of  the  story  of  the 
chains  Malmesbury  asks,  *Credendumne  putatur  quod  tradit  antiquitas  ?  * 
G.  Pontif.  1.  0. 


Laws  of  King  Wthtred.  427 

special  honour,  acquitted  of  all  blame,  and  sent  home  with  chap.  xn. 
the  apostolic  benediction ;  after  which  he  was  restored  to 
his  see,  and  became  godfather  to  the  king's  children.     This 
story  seems  to  have  grown  out  of  his  journey  to  Rome  at 
a  later  period. 

The  war  between  Wessex  and  Kent  was  concluded,  as  we 
have  seen,  by  an  agreement  on  the  part  of  the  Kentish-men 
to  make  pecuniary  satisfaction  for  the  death  of  Mul  ^.  This 
is  dated  in  the  year  after  Bertwald's  arrival ;  and  two  years 
later,  on  the  6th  of  August^in  'the  fifth  year  of  King  Wihtred, 
and  the  ninth  indiction,'  that  is,  in  696, — Wihtred's  regnal 
year  being  reckoned  from  an  earlier  date  than  the  death 
or  fall  of  Swebhard, — a  Kentish  Witenagemot  was  held  at  Laws  of 
a  '  place  called  Berghamstyde,'—  not  the  Berkhampstead  in  ^^l^tred. 
Hertfordshire,  which  would  be  Mercian,  but  Bearsted  near 
Maidstone  ^.  Bertwald,  '  high  bishop  of  Britain,'  as  he  is 
loftily  styled,  was  present,  with  Gebmund  of  Rochester, 
'  and  every  degree  of  the  province  spoke  in  accord  with  the 
obedient  people.'  Among  the  '  Dooms  '  then  enacted  were 
several  affecting  the  Church.  It  was  to  be  '  free  of  im- 
post * ' :  but  it  is  probable  that  already  its  lands  were  not 
excused  from  contributing  to  the  repairs  of  roads  and  forti- 
fications, and  to  the  military  service  of  the  realm  ^.     The 

^  See  above,  p.  405. 

^  So  '  Kugern'  in  the  record  is  explained,  Johnson,  Engl.  Can.  i.  141. 

2  Johnson,  1.  c. ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  238.  The  vicar  of  Bearsted 
informs  me  that  sessions  were  formerly  held  on  a  moated  mound,  which 
has  tiers  of  seats  above  it,  near  this  village. 

*  '  Impost '  would  here  mean  the  land-tax,  estimated  in  produce  or 
stock  ;  Churton,  E.  E.  Ch.  p.  122.  Another  reading,  however,  would  mean 
*  freedom  in  jurisdiction  and  revenue '  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  233. 

^  The  '  trinoda  necessitas,'  or  ^onus  inevitabile,'  consisted  of  the  '  bryg- 
bot,'  the  '  burh-bot,'  and  the  •  fyrd '  (fyrd  or  fird  =  army,  and  is  here  used 
for  service  in  the  army)  ;  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  241  ff.  ;  Kemble,  i.  301  ; 
Freeman,!.  93 ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  86.  It  was  imposed,  apparently,  on  all 
church  lands  in  Kent ;  and  Offa  of  Mercia  says  of  it  expressly  '  ab  eo  opere 
nullum  exousatum  esse ' ;  cp.  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  92,  204.  At  first,  in  North- 
umbria  (and  generally,  Lingard  thinks',  lands  devoted  *  to  pious  purposes 
were  most  likely  relieved  from  all  burdens  whatsoever ' ;  Kemble,  i.  302. 
Whitby  was  thus  exempt  from  *  militia  terrestris ' ;  so  some  church  lands 
in  ancient  Scotland  were  to  be  free  for  ever  from  tribute  or  custom,  or 
military  service,  &c.  ;  Stuart,  Book  of  Deer,  p.  Ixxxvii ;  Skene,  Celt.  Sc. 
iii.  228.    It  was  immunity  of  this  sort  which  led  to  the  scandal  of 


428  Laws  of  King  Wihtred, 

CHAP.  XII.  clergy  were  to  pray  for  the  king,  and  to  'revere  him  without 
command,  of  their  free  will,'  i.e.  pray  for  him,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  in  the  ordinary  Church  service^.  The  'mundbyrd^,' 
or  penalty  for  violating  the  Church's  protection,  was  to  be 
the  same  as  that  for  violating  the  king's.  Unchastity  was 
to  be  ecclesiastically  punished.  A  priest  who  allowed  of  it, 
or '  neglected  to  baptize  a  sick  person,  or  was  so  drunk  that 
he  could  not  do  it' — a  significant  provision^ — was  to  desist 
from  his  ministry  until  the  bishop  should  judge  his  case. 
A  tonsured  man  seeking  for  hospitality  here  or  there  was  to 
have  it  once ;  not  oftener,  unless  his  rovings  were  licensed*. 
Emancipation  of  slaves^  at  the  altar  was  recognized.  Servile 
labour  between  sunset  on  Saturday  and  sunset  on  Sunday^ 
was  prohibited.  '  Offerings  to  devils '  were  to  be  punished 
by  forfeiture  of  goods,  and  such  a  fine  as  would  have  been 
required  to  save  a  man  from  the  pillory  '^,  had  it  been  in  use, 
or,  on  another  theory,  to  loosen  the  grasp  of  the  avenger  of 
blood  ^.     To  eat  flesh  on  a  fast- day,  or  to  give  it  to  depen- 


pseudo-monasteries  held  by  laymen  pretending  to  be  abbots ;  Bede, 
Ep.  to  Egb.  7.  His  indignant  censure  of  this  abuse  was  written  at 
a  time  when  a  reaction  was  setting  in  against  over-indulgence 
to  monasteries  ;  not  only  was  care  taken  not  to  free  them  from  the 
'necessitas,'  but  St.  Boniface  found  reason  to  complain  of  the  'forced 
service  in  royal  building  works,'  required  from  English  monks  in  his 
time  ;  Ep.  to  Cuthb.  c.  11.  Such  services  or  burdens,  together  with 
'  vectigalia,'  were  remitted  by  charters  of  the  eighth  century  (Cod. 
Dipl.  i.  119,  144,  151).  See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  241.  The  legates  in  787 
were  content  to  provide  against  unjust  or  excessive  exactions  from  'God's 
churches  ' ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  455. 

^  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  203  (or  175J. 

^  Properly,  the  '  holding  out  of  the  hand,'  as  of  a  patron  in  defence  of 
a  client ;  see  Robertson,  Scotl.  under  Early  Kings,  ii.  452.  Cp.  Stubbs, 
Const.  Hist,  i.  210.  Here  it  is  used  for  the  penalty  of  violating  this 
protection.  On  the  privilege  of  sanctuary,  cp.  Ine's  Laws,  5,  and  see 
above,  p.  103. 

3  Cp.  Theodore's  Penitential,  i.  i ;  Boniface,  Ep.  to  Cuthb.  10.  Drunken- 
ness was  already  a  national  vice.     Cp.  C.  of  ClovesKo,  c.  21. 

*  See  fifth  canon  of  Hertford,  above,  p.  279. 
'  See  above,  p.  346. 

^  Literally,  Sunday  eve  and  Monday  eve.  So  Ine's  Laws,  3.  Comp. 
Malmesbuiy,  G.  Pontif.  v.  276,  for  a  story  of  a  woman  blamed  by  her 
neighbours  for  spinning  after  sunset  on  Saturday.     See  above,  p.  376. 

'  Heals-fang  :  Johnson,  i.  147  ;  Thoi-pe,  Glossary  to  Ancient  Laws. 

*  Kobertson,  Scotl.  under  Early  Kings,  ii.  288. 


The  'Privilege^  of  Wihtred,  429 

dents,  was  penal.  A  bishop,  like  the  king,  was  excused  from  chap.  xh. 
oath  in  giving  evidence  ^.  A  priest,  if  accused,  was  to  clear 
himself  by  saying,  in  his  sacred  vestments,  before  the  altar, 
*I  say  the  truth  in  Christ,  I  lie  not' ;  a  deacon  might  do  the 
same.  Inferior  clerics,  and  laymen,  were  to  clear  them- 
selves by  oath  at  the  altar.  The  privileges  of  a  '  housel- 
ganger  ^ '  or  communicant  were  recognized,  as  in  the  laws 
of  Ine. 

It   would   seem   that   soon   after   this  assembly  bishop  Tobias, 
Gebmund  of  Kochester  died  ^  and  was  succeeded  by  Tobias,  Rochester, 
one  of  the  many  prelates^  whom  Bertwald  consecrated,  and 
one  of  the  scholarly  ecclesiastics  who  had  been  trained  in 
the  great  school  of  Canterbury;  'a  man,'  says  Bede,  'of 
multifarious   learning,   in    the    Latin,   Greek,   and   Saxon 
tongues.'    He  held  the  see  of  Rochester  until  726.    He  was  Privilege 
present  at  another  Kentish  Witenagemot  held  at  Baccan-  ^ 
celd  ^  or  Bapchild,  near  Sittingbourne,  when  Wihtred  for- 
bade '  any  layman  to  usurp  or  appropriate  what  had  been 
given  to  the  Lord  and  confirmed  with  the  cross  of  Christ, 
and   dedicated':  sacrilege   of   this   sort   was  described  as 
a  '  stripping  of  the  Living  God,  or  rending  of  His  coat  and 
His  heritage.'      In  the  name  of  God   Almighty,   and   all 
Saints,  the  king  commanded  all  his  successors  and  all  laics 
of  his  realm  not  to  take  possession  of  any  monastery  which 
he  or  his  predecessors  had  given  over  to  Christ,  the  Holy 
Apostles,  and  the  Virgin  Mother.     Whenever  an  abbacy  ^ 

^  '  His  word,  or  testimony,  like  that  of  the  king,  was  conclusive  in 
itself,  and  did  not  require  to  be  supported  by  the  oaths  of  compurgators ; ' 
Palgrave,  p.  164.  To  be  excused  from  oaths  was  a  privilege,  which  was 
claimed  for  bishops  at  the  inquiry  as  to  the  minutes  of  the  council  held  at 
Constantinople  in  448 ;  Mansi,  vi.  764. 

2  See  above,  p.  411. 

^  See  above,  p.  423. 

*  Bede,  v.  8.     For  Tobias,  see  also  Bede,  v.  23. 

^  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  238. 

^  In  this  genuine  form  of  the  charter  (see  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  241) 
nothing  is  here  said  about  the  vacancy  of  a  bishopric,  as  if  that  was  also 
to  be  filled  up  by  free  election.  But  this  is  found  in  the  version  given 
by  Wilkins,  i.  57,  'Ut  quando  .  .  .  defungitur,  episc&pus,'  &c.  Cp.  Chron. 
694.  Lingard  says,  '  Under  Theodore  and  his  immediate  successors  the 
appointment  of  bishops  was  generally  made  in  the  national  synods  ;  * 
Angl.-Sax.  Ch.  i.  91. 


430  Wihtred's  Privilege, 

mxv.  XII.  should  become  vacant,  it  was  for  the  bishop  of  the  diocese  ^ 
to  give  '  counsel  and  consent '  for  a  good  election,  and  to 
bless  the  person  elected.  In  the  archiepiscopal  diocese,  the 
archbishop's  sanction  was  to  be  necessary  for  any  abbatial 
appointment.  All  these  matters  were  to  be  exempt  from 
secular  authority,  and  subjected  to  the  metropolitan's 
control.  For  greater  security,  a  list  of  the  monasteries  was 
appended  :  St.  Peter's  or  Upminster,  i.  e.  SS.  Peter  and  Paul 
in  Canterbury,  Reculver,  Southminster,  Dover,  Folkestone, 
Lyminge  ^,  Sheppey,  and  Hoe.  By  Southminster  wa§ 
meant  Minster  in  Thanet,  where  the  royal  abbess  Mil- 
dred was  still  presiding  ^ :  she  signed  the  document  first 
among  five  abbesses.  '  A  further  liberty,  so  the  king  was 
made  to  say,  was  added  ^,'  by  a  grant  of  entire  immunity 
from  all  burdens  greater  and  lesser  ^,  and  all  exactions  on 
the  part  of  kings  or  earls,  to  Christ  Church  in  Canterbury, 
and  to  the  church  of  Rochester,  and  to  '  the  other  above- 
named  churches  of  God ' ;  but  with  a  salvo  that  such  ex- 
emption should  not  be  turned  into  a  bad  precedent.  Any 
violator  of  this  grant,  whether  king  or  bishop,  or  abbot,  or 
thane,  or  any  human  power,  was  to  be  excommunicated, 
and  to  forfeit  pardon  in  this  world  and  the  next,  unless  he 
should  have  made  full  satisfaction  to  the  bishop  ^ :  and  the 
charter  itself  was  to  be  carefully  preserved  in  the  '  Church 
of  the  Saviour,'  the  metropolitan  church  of  Canterbury,  as 
a  record  and  a  safeguard  for  all  churches  '  in  this  Kent.' 
The  date  of  this  Privilege  of  Wihtred  seems  to  fall  within 
the  last  years  of  the  seventh  century. 

*  '  Parochiae.'     So  in  Bede,  iii.  7  ;  v.  i8  ;  Ep.  to  Egb.  8. 

^  See  Wihtred's  grants  to  the  basilica  of  St.  Mary  at  Lyminge,  Cod. 
Dipl.  i.  50,  54.     On  Dover  and  Folkestone  see  above,  p.  126. 

^  See  above,  p.  273.  She  '  died  towards  the  close  of  the  seventh 
century '  ;  Alban  Butler,  Feb.  20. 

*  '  Adhuc  addimus  majorem  libertatem.' 

^  'Ab  omnibus  difficultatibus  saecularium  servitutum  .  .  .  ab  operibus, 
majoribus  minoribusve  gravitatibus,'  &c.     See  above,  p.  427. 

*  Menaces  of  spiritual  punishment  were  often — not  always — added  as 
sanctions  to  charters.  Sometimes  what  is  denounced  is  '  separation  from 
communion  of  the  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ,'  e.  g.  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  30. 
Anotlier  form  is,  *  Let  him  know  that  he  will  answer  for  it  to  Christ,'  ib, 
i.  25  ;  cp.  i.  82,  84,  90. 


Giithlac  at  Crowland.  431 

Of  these  years  there  is  not  much  more  to  be  said.  Wil-  chap.  xu. 
frid  continued  at  Leicester ;  he  did  not  neglect  his  own 
cause,  for  we  find  that  he  made  application  to  Pope  Sergius, 
and  received  from  him  a  letter  confirmatory  of  the  previous 
Roman  decrees  ^ ;  but  for  any  practical  effect  of  such 
a  document  he  could  scarcely  hope  until  some  change  had 
passed  over  the  mind  of  King  Aldfrid.  He  was  safe  and 
tranquil  under  the  shadow  of  the  throne  of  Ethelred  ;  but 
he  must  have  sorrowed  deeply  with  that  prince  when  the 
fierce  Mercian  nobles  in  697  put  to  death  his  Northumbrian 
queen  Osthryd  2.  In  that  same  year  there  began  that  Guthlac  of 
strange  and  intensely  mediaeval  saintship  which  made  the 
name  of  Guthlac  of  Crowland  as  fascinating  to  Mercian 
piety  as  Cuthbert's  had  been  to  Northumbrian.  We  hear  ^ 
of  the  boy  as  born  to  a  Mercian  earl  of  royal  descent, 
named  Penwald,  and  his  wife  Tette,  baptized  after  a  'tribe' 
called  Guthlacings, — the  original  name,  as  borne  by  him, 
signifying  Battle-sport  ^  \  he  is  described  as  growing  out  of 
childhood  without  any  taint  of  childish  perversity,  gentle, 
sweet-tempered,  dutiful,  as  if  '  irradiated  by  spiritual 
light ' :  in  early  youth  the  warlike  temper  wakes  up  in 
him, — he  is  fired  with  emulation  at  the  thought  of  '  ancient 
heroes,' — he  becomes  the  captain  of  a  fierce  band,  carrying 
fire  and  sword  through  the  lands  of  his  enemies,  but  even 
then  restoring  to  the  plundered  a  third  part  of  the  spoil. 
Nine  years  of  this  foraying  life  suffice  him  ^  :  he  begins  to 
see  what  life  and  what  death  means  :  he  thinks  of  '  the 
woeful  ends'  of  mighty  princes,  estimates  the  vanity  of 
earthly  glory,  trembles  at  the  thought  of '  the  inevitable  end.' 
These  musings  come  into  his  mind  by  night  ^,  and  in  the 
morning  he  bids  his  comrades  find  another  leader.     Their 

^  Eddi,  46,  51.  '  Bede,  v.  24  ;  Chron.  a.  697. 

^  Act.  SS.  Bened.  iii,  265  ;  Life  of  St.  Guthlac  by  Felix  of  Jarrow, 
written  in  the  middle  of  the  eighth  centuiy,  and  evidently  after  the 
model  of  Aldhelm's  grandiloquent  periods,  and  with  much  of  the  con- 
ventionalism of  hagiology. 

*  Kingsley's  Hermits,  p.  304.  'Laking*  is  an  old  North-country  word 
for  '  playing.' 

^  He  spent  some  time  *in  exile*  among  the  Welsh  ;  Felix,  20. 

®  Felix  says,  '  He  remembered  to  have  heard  the  words,  Ne  in  hieme 
vel  sabbato  fuga  vestra  fiat ; '  c.  11  (Matt.  xxiv.  20). 


432  Guthlac 

CHAP.  XII.  remonstrances  are  vain :  he  enters  the  monastery  of  men 
and  women, — ruled,  like  Whitby,  by  an  abbess,  named 
Elfrida, — which  had  for  some  time  existed  in  the  royal 
town  of  Repton^.  This  took  place  in  697,  when  he  was 
only  twenty-four  years  old.  He  at  first  offended  his 
brother  monks  by  never  tasting  any  strong  drink ^  'save 
in  time  of  Communion ' ;  but  his  frank,  modest,  and  affec- 
tionate disposition  disarmed  all  animosity ;  and  he  on  his 
part  set  himself  to  imitate  the  several  excellences  of  the 
other  inmates  of  the  house,  and,  as  his  biographer  touch- 
ingly  says,  '  the  gentleness  of  all.'  After  two  years  spent 
at  Repton  3,  he  resolved  to  adopt  the  hermit-life  ;  and  for 
that  purpose, '  with  the  leave  of  his  elders,'  took  his  journey 
towards  the  vast  fens  which, '  beginning  from  the  banks  of 
the  Granta  ^ '  or  Cam,  spread  northwards  in  a  dreary  suc- 
cession of  ponds  and  marshes  and  'black  wandering 
streams  •^,'  amid  which,  here  and  there,  islets  uplifted  their 
dark  masses  of  wood, '  forests  of  fir  and  oak,  ash  and  poplar, 
hazel  and  yew.'  Arriving  in  this  desolate  region,  Guthlac 
asked  some  of  the  inhabitants  whether  they  knew  of  any 
islet  which  was  uninhabited.    One  of  them,  Tatwin  by  name, 

^  '  Ripadum,'  Felix, — *  Hreopandun,  Repandune,'  &c.  It  was  the  burial- 
place  of  Mercian  royalty.  Elfrida  was  succeeded  by  *  Egburga,'  daughter 
of  the  East-Anglian  king  Ald^vulf,  who  sent  to  Guthlac  a  leaden  sarco- 
phagus and  a  shroud,  Ann.  Ord.  Ben.  ii.  39  ;  Angl.  Sac.  i.  595. 

^  See  above,  p.  428.  He  took  up  this  rule  of  '  total  abstinence  *  from  the 
day  on  which  he  received  '•  the  apostolic  (i.e.  Roman)  tonsure.' 

^  '  Psalmis,  canticis,  hymnis,  orationibus,  moribusque  ecclesiasticis  per 
biennium  imbutus  ; '  Felix,  13. 

*  Felix,  14 :  '  Est  in  mediterraneorum  Anglorum  Britanniae  partibus 
immensae  magnitudinis  acerrima  palus,'  &c.  See  this  copied  by  Orderic, 
iv.  16.  Compare  Malmesb.  G.  Pontif.  iv.  182,  that  the  fens  were  more 
than  a  hundred  miles  in  length.  See  Turner,  i.  322  ff. ;  Green,  Making  of 
Engl.  p.  351. 

*  Kingsley's  Hermits,  p.  301,  a  very  vivid  description :  and  for  another 
see  Clark's  '  Cambridge,'  p.  3  ff.  Compare  Felix  :  '  Nigris  fusis  vaporibus 
et  laticibus,'  '  umbrosa  solitudinis  nemora,'  '  nulbilosos  .  .  .  eremi  lucos,' 
*  loca  spinosa,'  *  stagnosa  paludis  ligustria,'  *  densas  arundinum  com- 
pagines.*  Henry  of  Huntingdon  describes  the  fens  more  pleasantly: 
'  Palus  ilia  latissima  et  visu  decora,  multis  fluviis  .  .  .  irrigata,  multis 
lacubus  .  .  .  depicta,  multis  etiam  silvis  et  insulis  florida  et  amoena  ;*  Hist. 
V.  25,  followed  by  Bromton,  X  Script.  868.  This  was  '  after  the  industry 
and  wisdom  of  the  monks  . .  .  had  been  at  work  to  .  .  .  cultivate  the 
wilderness  ' ;  Kingsley,  p.  30a. 


at  Crowland.  433 

said  that  he  knew  of  one  in  the  remoter  parts  of  the  fen,  chap.  xii. 
which  many  had  endeavoured  to  occupy,  but  had  been 
driven  away  by  '  monsters  of  the  wilderness,  and  awesome 
shapes  of  divers  kinds.'  Guthlac  begged  Tat  win  to  show 
him  the  spot,  and  thereupon  was  conducted  in  a  fishing- 
boat  to  an  islet  in  the  marshlands  crossed  by  the  Welland 
and  the  Nen.  This  was  Crowland  ^,  a  name  which  Guthlac 
has  made  famous,  for  he  took  it  as  his  abode,  on  a  summer 
day  when  probably  it  wore  its  least  repulsive  aspect, — on 
the  feast  of  St.  Bartholomew  ^  in  699.  He  practised  all  the 
austerities  which  belonged,  as  of  course,  to  the  life  of  an 
anchorite  ;  and  they  combined  with  the  wisp-fires,  and  wild 
sounds  of  winter  nights  among  the  fens,  and  probably  with 
intermittent  attacks  of  marsh  fever  ^,  to  call  up  those 
hideous  fancies  of  fiendish  visitation  and  onslaught  which 
read  in  Guthlac's  life  like  an  exaggeration  of  the  '  trials  of 
St.  Antony  *.'  Whatever  were  his  illusions,  he  preserved 
his  faith,  courage,  and  cheerfulness :  the  hagiologist  indi- 
cates that  he  could  repel  with  promptness,  perhaps  with 
humour,  fantastic  temptations  to  impossible  feats  of  absti- 

^  Croyland  is  a  corruption.  It  is  properly  Cruland  (*  Crudeland,  caenosa 
terra,'  Felix,  41),  and  hence  Crowland.  See  Freeman,  iv.  596.  It  is 
described  in  one  spurious  charter  as  enclosed  within  four,  in  another 
within  five  '  waters '  ;  Rer.  Angl.  Script,  i.  3,  9.  *  In  sanctuary  of  the 
four  rivers  ;*  Kingsley,  p.  306.  The  stone  church  built  there  in  716  had 
to  be  supported  on  oak  piles  and  a  mass  of  hard  soil  from  a  distance. 

*  After  his  first  visit  to  the  isle,  he  returned  to  Repton  to  say  farewell 
to  his  companions,  for  he  had  left  them  'insalutatos.'  He  repaired  to  Crow- 
land after  a  short  sojourn  with  them,  taking  two  boys  with  him.  Felix 
is  not  quite  distinct  as  to  the  St.  Bartholomew's  day  in  question,  whether 
it  was  the  occasion  of  his  first  visit,  or  of  his  regular  occupation  of 
Crowland.  His  sister  Pega  took  up  her  abode  *  as  a  recluse  in  another 
part  of  the  fens,  four  leagues  off  to  the  west';  Alb.  Butler,  April  11. 
Bishop  Hedda  (of  Lichfield)  visited  Crowland,  and  ordained  Guthlac 
priest  ;  Felix,  32. 

^  Kingsley,  Hermits,  p.  303.     See  Churton,  E.  E.  Ch.  p.  140. 

*  *  Erant  enim  adspectu  truces,  forma  terribilog,  .  .  .  dentibus  equinis 
.  .  .  trucibus  oculis  .  .  .  gutture  flammivomo  .  .  .  immensis  vagitibus,'  &c.  ; 
Felix,  19 ;  comp.  22.  The  fiends,  we  are  told,  tossed  him  into  the 
muddy  streams,  dragged  him  through  thorny  thickets,  &c.  On  one 
occasion,  says  Felix  gravely  (c.  20),  they  came  in  the  form  and  with  the 
speech  of  Britons  (Welshmen).  *  Great  numbers  of  Britons  seem  to  have 
taken  refuge  in  the  *'  wild  fens"  ;'  Elton,  Origins  of  Engl.  Hist.  p.  379. 
See  above,  p.  29. 

Ff 


434  Guthlac  at  Crowland, 

CHAP.  XII.  nence  ^ :  like  Cuthbert,  he  was  '  in  league '  with  the  fowls 
of  the  air  ;  the  wild  birds,  and  even  the  fishes  of  the  marsh, 
would  eat  from  his  hand  ;  swallows  came  to  sit  on  his  arms 
and  his  bosom,  and  it  was  when  his  friend,  an  abbot  named 
Wilfrid  2,  who  often  visited  him,  expressed  surprise  at  this 
familiarity,  that  Guthlac  uttered  the  memorably  beautiful 
answer,  '  Have  you  not  read  that  he  who  is  joined  to  God 
with  a  pure  spirit  finds  all  things  uniting  themselves  to 
him  in  God  ^  ?  '  We  cannot  wonder  that,  as  in  Cuthbert's 
case,  the  solitude  of  the  devout  hermit  was  broken  by 
crowds  of  visitors  of  all  kinds*,  'abbots,  brethren,  earls, 
the  rich,  the  sick,  the  poor,  not  only  from  the  neighbouring 
districts  of  Mercia,  but  from  the  remoter  parts  of  Britain,' 
— who  came  to  tell  him  of  their  troubles,  and  never  came 
without  finding  relief  ^.  So  that,  like  Cuthbert  on  Fame, 
the  inmate  of  Crowland  was  exercising  a  true  ministry  of 
consolation,  and  doing  a  work  of  wide  effect,  which  showed 
that  the  superstitious  form  impressed  by  circumstances 
upon  his  devotion  had  not  dulled  his  moral  insight,  nor 
chilled  his  discriminating  sympathy.  But  it  must  be 
remembered  that  what  we,  perhaps,  should  look  upon  as 
the  redeeming  point  in  a  grave  mistake  was  to  Guthlac 
a  mere  incident  in  a  life  which,  in  its  physical  conditions, 
was  far  more  terrible  than  that  of  the  old  Egyptian 
solitaries  ®,  and  which  in  fact  could  not  be  protracted 
beyond   fifteen   years'^.      But   so   to  live,   and   so   to   die, 

^  The  suggestion  was  to  fast  rigidly  for  six  days.  Guthlac  rose  and 
sang  out,  'Let  mine  enemies  be  turned  backward  !'  and  then  quietly  ate 
his  daily  meal  of  barley-bread  ;  Felix,  i8. 

2  Felix,  1 6,  25. 

^  '  Nonne  legisti  quia  qui  Deo  puro  spiritu  copulabitur,  omnia  sibi  in 
Deo  conjunguntur  ?  '  Felix,  25.     Comp.  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  21. 

*  Felix,  31. 

'  E.  g.  '  Nullum  taedium  sine  exhortatione,  nulla  maestitia  sine  conso- 
latione,  nulla  anximonia  sine  consilio  ab  illo-  reversa  est.*  Felix  had 
evidently  been  reading  Bede  (Vit.  Cuthb.  22),  whose  memory  he  naturally 
cherished.  He  tells  us  that  Guthlac  supported  all  that  he  said  by 
authority  of  Scripture  ;  32  :  and  calls  him  'alacer,  efficax,  in  discernendis 
causis.'  *  Nothing  stayed  in  his  mind  but  charity,  peace,  pity,  forgiveness. 
No  one  ever  saw  him  angry  .  .  .  excited  .  .  .  sorrowful,'  &c. ;  38.  Cp. 
S.  Athan.  Vit.  Ant.  14.  *  See  Kingsley's  Hermits,  pp.  130-134. 

'  See  Kingsley,  p.  306;   and  on  'the  vast  longevity  of  many  of  the 


Foundation  of  Evesham.  435 

appeared  to  the  men  of  his  time,  under  the  influence  of  chap.  xii. 
a  false  ideal,  to  be  the  summit  of  Christian  attainment. 

And  while  in  that  southernmost  corner  of  Lincolnshire 
a  Mercian  hermit  was  thus  attracting  the  homage  which  in 
after  days  expressed  itself  by  the  foundation  of  a  great  Founda- 
monastery,  described  by  its  inmates  as  '  the  holy  sanctuary  Evesham, 
of  St.  Guthlac'  under  the  protection  of  St.  Mary  and 
St.  Bartholomew  ^,  a  Mercian  bishop  was  designing  and 
establishing  a  religious  house  which  became  one  of  the 
greatest  in  the  Midlands,  at  a  place  which  was  to  be 
associated  with  a  crisis  in  English  secular  history  2.  It 
was  a  wild  and  lonely  spot  rising  abruptly  above  the  Avon, 
and  covered  with  thorny  thickets,  but  marked  by  a  small 
church  of  ancient,  probably  of  British,  construction  ^.  Here 
Eoves,  one  of  Bishop  Egwin's  herdsmen,  professed  to  have 
seen  an  appearance  of  the  Virgin  * ;  and  accordingly  at 
*  Eoves-ham  ^ '  arose  a  minster  in  her  honour.     Although 

fathers  of  the  desert,  p.  134.  Paul  is  said  to  have  lived  113  years, 
Antony  105,  Elias  of  Antinous  no  (Soz.  vi.  28),  &c.  Guthlac  died,  aged 
forty- seven,  on  April  11,  714,  and  was  succeeded  in  his  solitude  by  Cissa, 
a  convert  from  paganism  ;  Florence,  a.  714.  One  of  the  strangest  things 
in  the  story  is  that  a  cleric  named  Beccelin,  having  come  to  live  as 
Guthlac's  servant,  and  being  about  to  shave  him  as  usual,  was  sorely 
tempted  to  cut  his  throat,  'ut .  . .  locum  ipsius  postea  cum  magna  regum 
principumque  venerantia  habiturus  foret.'  Guthlac  bade  him  '  spit  out 
the  venom '  of  his  wicked  thought  ;  he  fell  on  his  knees  and  confessed  all ; 
Felix,  21. 

^  See  the  alleged  charter  of  Bertulf,  in  the  false  Ingulf,  Rer.  Aiigl. 
Script,  i.  14  ;  Cod.  Dipl,  ii.  41.     See  Kingsley,  Hermits,  p.  307. 

^  The  battle  of  Evesham  was  fought  on  August  4,  1265. 

2  Malmesbury,  G.  Pontif.  iv.  160. 

*  Ann.  SS.  Bened.  iii.  335  ;  Chron.  Evesh.  p.  9;  Monast.  Angl.  ii.  i. 
She  was  said  to  have  appeared  to  Eoves  as  brighter  than  the  sun,  holding 
a  book  and  singing  heavenly  songs  with  two  other  virgins  ;  he  told  his 
master  what  he  had  seen ;  and  Egwin  on  a  subsequent  morning,  attended 
by  three  companions,  went  barefoot  to  the  place  and  saw  a  similar  vision. 
Egwin  was  said  to  have  first  obtained  an  old  monastery  at  Fladbury,  and 
to  have  exchanged  it  for  Stratford.  But  the  documents  are  marked  as 
spurious ;  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  36. 

5  Originally  '  Eoves-holm,'  holm  being  any  ground  surrounded  or  washed 
by  a  river.  The  British  name  was  Hethbo.  See  Tindal's  History  of 
Evesham,  p.  2.  The  Mercians  had  called  it  Hethomme  (Athamne, 
Mabillon)  and  Cronuchomme :  Egwin,  according  to  the  legend,  had  there 
flung  the  key  of  his  chains  into  the  river,  and  afterwards  obtained  the 
place  from  the  king,  as  pasture-ground  for  monks.     Florence  dates  the 


43^  Foundation  of  Evesham, 

CHAP.  xri.  its  early  history  is  marred  by  fiction  and  forged  documents, 
one  interesting  detail  may  probably  be  received  as  au- 
thentic. Some  eight  miles  from  Evesham,  at  Alcester,  was 
a  royal  estate  ^,  inhabited  by  persons  who  disliked  Egwin 
and  his  preaching,  and  devised  an  ingenious  expedient  for 
ridding  themselves  of  both  2.  In  the  neighbouring  wood 
many  '  blacksmiths '  carried  on  their  trade.  One  day,  while 
Egwin  was  pleading  with  his  untoward  audience,  there  rose 
up  such  a  din  of  hammers  ^  and  anvils  that  he  was  '  fain  to 
depart  with  tingling  ears.'  Passing  over  a  story  of  the 
miraculous  removal  of  this  hindrance,  we  may  see  a  not 
improbable  intimation  of  the  resistance  which  still,  in  out- 
lying parts,  was  offered  to  Christianity  by  the  adherents  of 
the  defeated  Paganism. 

And  now  we  must  resume  consideration  of  the  case  of 
Wilfrid,  the  last  stage  of  which  commences  with  the  second 
year  of  the  eighth  century. 

foundation  a  few  years  after  Egwin's  consecration ;  Tanner  dates  it  701. 
See  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  64. 

^  '  Regale  mansum  .  .  .  nemoribus  consitum,  fluminibus  .  .  .  et  rivulis 
circumdatunij  necnon  muris  et  turribus  vallatura.'  A  council  had  been 
held  there,  'non  multo  prius,'  which  had  confirmed  the  immunities  of 
Evesham  ;  Chron.  Evesh.  p.  25.  But  the  story  of  this  council  of  709  is 
very  doubtful.  See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  279-283  :  cp.  Lingard,  A.-S. 
Ch.  i.  209. 

2  Ann.  SS.  Bened.  iii.  336  ;  Chron.  Evesh.  p.  25. 

^  *  Prae  concussione,  immo  confusione,  malleorum  et  incudum  adhuc 
tinniebant  ambae  aures  ejus,'  &c.  ;  Chi'on.  Evesh.  p.  26.  See  Green, 
Making  of  Engl.  p.  351* 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

Ever  since  the  second  expulsion  of  Wilfrid,  a  monotonous 
tranquillity  had  reigned  in  the  Church  of  Northumbria. 
Ecclesiastical  interests  were  sedulously  cared  for  by  King 
Aldf rid :  ecclesiastical  life  was  surrounded  with  all  that  could 
give  it  security  and  honour.  Bishop  Eadbert  of  Lindisf arne 
had  died,  after  some  weeks'  illness,  on  the  6th  of  May,  698  ^  Death  of 
having  caused  the  tomb  of  Cuthbert  to  be  opened  on  the  20th  EaVbert. 
of  March,  when  the  saint's  body  was  found  '  entire  as  if  he 
were  still  living,  and  his  joints  still  flexible  as*  if  he  were 
but  asleep  ^Z  Part  of  the  grave-clothes  were  brought  to 
Eadbert,  who  '  kissed  them  as  if  they  still  covered  the 
father's  body,'  and  ordered  others  to  be  put  in  their  place. 
He  himself  was  ere  long  laid  in  the  same  grave,  but  under 
the  saint's  coffin  ^.  He  was  succeeded  by  Eadfrid,  the 
prelate  to  whom,  along  with  his  monks,  Bede,  many  years 
later,  inscribed  his  Life  of  St.  Cuthbert  *.  The  community 
to  which  Bede  himself  belonged  flourished  under  the  pre- 

^  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  42,  43. 

2  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  42  ;  Vit.  Anon.,  Bed.  Op.  vi.  380. 

^  '  Relics '  of  Eadbert  and  others,  with  the  head  of  Oswald  (see  above, 
p.  176),  were  found  beside  Cuthbert's  body  in  1104. 

*  In  the  dedication  preface  Bede  reminds  Eadfrid  that  he  had  promised 
to  enrol  his  name,  after  his  death,  among  those  of  persons  to  be  prayed 
for  at  Lindisfarne  ;  and  in  pledge  of  such  future  enrolment  had  ordered 
Guthfrid,  the  '  mansionarius '  or  sacristan,  to  place  his  name,  during  his 
life,  in  the  'white  book'  of  the  community.  This  prelate  had  written 
out  with  his  own  hand,  'for  the  sake  of  St.  Cuthbert'  (i.  e.  for  Cuthbert's 
use),  a  copy  of  the  Gospels,  which  was  afterwards,  by  his  successor 
Ethelwald's  order,  adorned  with  gold  and  jewels,  and  ultimately 
preserved  at  Durham ;  Simeon,  Dunelm.  Eccl.  ii.  12.  Cp.  Anderson, 
Scotl.  in  Early  Chr.  Times,  p.  149 ;  Bp.  Browne,  E.  Engl.  Ch.  Hist, 
pp.  72,  no.  He  also,  early  in  his  episcopate,  repaired  the  time-worn 
oratory  of  Cuthbert  in  Fame ;  Bede,  Vit.  Cuthb.  46. 


439  Letter  of  Pope  Sergtus. 

CHAP.  XIII.  sidency  of  Ceolfrid,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  had  united  the 
abbacy  of  Wearmouth  to  that  of  Jarrow :  and  we  find  him 
sending  some  monks  to  Rome  in  the  year  700  '^,  with  a  gift 
or  '  blessing '  for  Pope  Sergius,  intended,  no  doubt,  to  recom- 
mend the  petition  which  they  were  to  make  for  a  new  letter 
of  privilege,  like  that  which  had  been  received  from  Pope 
Pope  Ser-  Agatho.  Sergius  complied  with  the  request  of  Ceolfrid : 
Ceolfr?d.  ^^^  ^^^  entrusted  to  one  of  the  messengers  a  letter  ^,  in 
which  he  informed  the  abbot  that  certain  questions  of  an 
ecclesiastical  kind  ^  had  arisen,  which  could  not  be  settled 
without  a  long  inquiry;  that  therefore  he  must  needs 
confer  with  men  of  literary  acquirements;  and  that  he 
desired  Ceolfrid  to  send  to  Rome,  at  once,  'the  religious 
servant  of  God,' — here,  in  a  manuscript  exhibiting  the 
letter,  *  N.'  occurs  instead  of  a  name, — '  belonging  to  his 
monastery,'  in  full  confidence  that,  after  the  matters  in 
hand  should  have  been  settled,  he  would  return  home  in 
safety,  by  the  Lord's  favour  and  Ceolf rid's  prayers.  Malmes- 
bury's  version  of  this  letter  contains  the  name  of  Bede, 
and  adds  the  designation  of  '  presbyterum.'  But  Bede  the 
historian  never  did  visit  Rome, — never,  indeed,  went  beyond 
Northumbria  ^ :  nor  was  he  ordained  priest  until  701-2  ^ 

^  See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  412,  referring  to  Bede,  De  Temp.  Ratione, 
c.  47,  which  shows  that  the  monks,  on  Christmas  day  of  700,  reckoned  then 
as  the  first  day  of  701,  were  in  St.  Mary  Major's,  and  there  saw  a  waxen 
tablet  recording,  *  From  the  Passion  of  our  Lord  there  are  668  years.' 

^  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  248. 

^  '  Ecclesiasticarum  causarum  capitulis.' 

*  Comp.  Bede,  v.  24  :  '  Qui  natus  .  .  .  suscepi.'  '  His  Epitome  seems 
to  show  that  he  never  left  England  ; '  see  Smith's  Bede,  p.  799.  He  adds 
that  it  might  be  rejoined  that  a  very  short  stay  in  Rome  would  not 
necessarily  be  inconsistent  with  the  Epitome. 

'  The  MS.  Cotton  in  the  British  Museum,  referred  to  the  tenth  century, 
gives  the  passage  thus:  'Religiosum  famulum  Dei  N.  venerabilis  mona- 
sterii  tui  .  .  .  dirigere.*  Bede's  name  '  is  inserted  in  the  margin'  (Giles's 
Bede,  i.  p.  Ixix).  'N.,'  for  '  nomen,'  shows  that  the  copyist  had  before 
him  an  accidental  blank  where  the  name  should  have  been.  Malmesbury, 
G.  Regum,  i.  58,  quotes  the  letter  thus :  'Religiosum  Dei  famulum  Bedam, 
venerabilis  monasterii  tui  presbyterum.'  Giles  suggests  that  this  last 
word  might  have  been  '  innocently '  inserted  by  Malmesbury,  since  Bede 
afterwards  became  a  priest ;  or  it  might  be  '  a  mistake  on  the  part  of  the 
pope,'  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  i.  301.  Lingard's  suggestion  that  *  the  elder 
Bede,'  not  the  historian,  was  meant,  seems  very  improbable  ;  A.-S, 
Ch.  ii.  413. 


Council  of  Easterfield,  439 

Yet  he  may,  nevertheless,  have  been  recommended  to  chap.  xm. 
Sergius  by  the  Wearmouth  monks,  as  an  eminently 
promising  scholar :  the  title  of  '  presbyter '  may  have 
been  a  mistake  or  a  gloss :  the  invitation  was  not  im- 
probably sent  for  him,  and  his  non-compliance  may  have 
been  simply  caused  by  the  Pope's  speedy  death.  The  privi- 
lege was  duly  exhibited  before  the  Northumbrian  Witan, 
and  confirmed  by  the  signatures  of  the  king  and  the 
bishops.  Whatever  the  questions  were  to  which  the  Pope's 
letter  alludes,  it  is  evident  that  about  the  beginning  of  the 
eighth  century  an  uneasy  feeling  was  stirring  in  the  minds 
of  Northumbrian  Churchmen,  and  of  others  in  other  dis- 
tricts, as  to  the  position  of  Wilfrid;  accordingly,  Aldfrid 
resolved  to  assemble  a  general  '  synod '  at  which  the  whole  Council  of 
English  Church  should  be  represented.  It  was  held,  in  702, 
at  a  place  which  Eddi  calls  by  the  two  names  of  '  Ouestrae- 
felda '  or  Estrefeld,  and  '  ^tswinapathe  ^.'  This  '  Easter- 
field  '  must  have  been  somewhere  in  Yorkshire,  perhaps  at 
Austerfield  near  Bawtry  2,  which  would  be  a  convenient 
place  for  persons  arriving  from  the  south.  Among  the 
latter  was  Archbishop  Bertwald ;  and  nearly  all  his 
suffragans  are  said  to  have  attended  him.  Wilfrid  was 
'  respectfully '  invited  to  appear,  in  order  that  '  according  to 
the  canonical  statutes '  whatever  had  been  wrong  might  be 
set  right.  He  came  accordingly,  attended  by  several  abbots 
of  his  monasteries.  On  his  arrival,  Eddi  tells  us,  there  was 
'  much  altercation,'  mainly  caused  by  prelates,  and  by  abbots 
who  from  '  avaricious  motives '  were  opposed  to  any  scheme 
of  agreement.  The  king  himself,  we  are  assured,  was  prac- 
tically on  that  side.  Accusations  were  brought  up  against 
Wilfrid,  which  Eddi  declares  to  be  false.  At  last  the  point 
at  issue  was  clearly  raised.  Would  Wilfrid  comply  with 
the  regulations  of  Theodore  %  According  to  such  light  as 
we  have  on  the  matter,  this  demand  meant,  Would  he 
submit  to  such  a  partition  of  the  old  diocese  of  York  as 

^  Eddi,  46,  60.  Compare  *  Edwinscliff'  in  Chronicle,  a.  761;  Raine, 
Hist,  of  Ch.  of  York,  i.  65.  He  suggests,  however,  that  the  second  name 
may  mean  only  *  At  the  svoine'spath.'  Near  Austerfield  is  *■  Swine-car '  (car 
or  carr  in  southern  Yorkshire,  e.  g.  near  Doncaster,  =  marsh). 

^  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  254. 


440  Council  of  Easterfield, 

CHAP.  XIII.  had  been  devised  by  Theodore  in  despite  of  his  remon- 
strances %  To  yield  to  this  demand,  absolutely,  would  have 
been  to  give  up  the  position  in  which  he  had  been  placed 
by  the  Roman  Council, — a  position  of  manifest  advantage 
from  his  point  of  view.  He  therefore  answered  with  a 
qualification :  '  Yes,  I  am  willing  to  comply  with  those 
regulations — according  to  the  rule  of  the  canons ; '  meaning, 
virtually,  so  far  as  they  could  be  brought  into  harmony 
with  the  decree  of  the  Council  ^.  This  saving  clause,  like 
Thomas  of  Canterbury's  'Saving  my  order ^,'  was  clearly 
calculated  to  exasperate  his  opponents :  they  would  regard 
it  as  nullifying  any  verbal  concession.  And  Wilfrid  further 
damaged  his  case  by  indulging  in  what  his  panegyrist 
acknowledges  to  have  been  an  outburst  of  sharp  reproaches ; 
*  Here  you  have  been  for  two  and  twenty  years  contenti- 
ously  standing  out  against  the  Apostolic  authority.  With 
what  front  can  you  still  prefer  any  ordinances  of  Arch- 
bishop Theodore,  framed  in  time  of  discord  between  prelates, 
to  the  salutary  decrees  of  Pope  Agatho,  Pope  Benedict,  and 
Pope  Sergius  ^  % '  The  Council,  apparently,  adjourned  at 
this  point;  and  Wilfrid  retired  to  take  counsel  with  his 
friends.  He  then  received  two  visitors  in  succession.  One 
of  the  king's  thanes,  who  when  a  boy  had,  like  other  '  earl- 
born  '  lads,  been  bred  up  in  the  house  of  the  great  bishop  of 
York,  and  was  warmly  attached  to  him^,  emerged  in  dis- 
guise from  the  king's  tent,  and  '  mingling  like  an  unknown 
person  with  the  soldiers  who  surrounded  it,'  found  his  way 
to  his  old  patron,  and  said,  '  They  want  to  induce  you  to 
promise  in  writing  that  you  will  submit  to  whatever  they 

^  Eadmer  makes  him  say,  'You  accuse  me  because  I  do  not  receive  those 
decrees  of  Theodore,  quas  ipse  non  auctoritate  canonica,  sed  discordia 
dictante  composuit ; '  c.  46. 

^  See  Milman,  Lat.  Chr.  v.  47. 

^  'Wilfridus  igitur  non  ideo  sibi  injuriam  illatam  existimabat,  quod 
episcopatus  suus  in  plures  divideretur,'  but  that  bishops  had  been  exercising 
jurisdiction  in  it  in  virtue  of  Theodore's  arbitrary  decree.  '  Pontifices  enim 
Romani  decernebant  dioecesim  illam  tam  longelateque  extensam  in  plures 
esse  partiendam,  non  tamen  mera  apostolica  auctoritate,  sed  concilio  rite 
congregate,  depositis  iis  qui  in  Vilfridi  absentia  in  episcopos  contra 
canones  ordinarentur  ; '  Smith's  Bede,  p.  755. 

*  '  Unus  ex  ministris,'  Eddi ;  '  juvenis  quidam  ourialis,'  Eadmer. 


Council  of  Easterfield,  441 

shall  determine.  And  what  they  determine  will  be  this ;  chap.  xm. 
that  you  shall  resign  into  the  archbishop's  hands  whatever 
you  have  held, — bishopric  or  monastery,  in  Northumbria 
or  in  Mercia, — to  be  disposed  of  at  his  will.'  Having  given 
this  information,  the  friendly  thane  departed  as  secretly  as 
he  had  come^.  Presently  afterwards  a  bishop  entered, 
commissioned  by  Aldfrid  and  Bertwald  to  urge  Wilfrid 
to  promise,  beforehand,  that  he  would  adhere  to  any 
decision  of  the  archbishop.  Wilfrid  answered  as  any  one 
in  his  position  would  have  answered  :  '  /  must  first  know 
what  that  decision  will  be  like.'  '  I  do  not  know,  for  my 
part,'  said  the  envoy:  'nor  will  the  archbishop  give  any 
information  until  he  is  assured  under  your  hand  that  you 
will  abide  by  what  he  says.'  '  I  never  before  heard,'  said 
Wilfrid,  '  of  any  attempt  to  bind  a  man  to  obey  a  judge- 
ment not  yet  given,  before  he  knew  what  it  would  be.  He 
might  find  that  it  ordered  what  was  impossible.'  But  he 
came  to  the  Council  when  it  again  assembled,  and  promised 
that  he  would  heartily  accept  the  archbishop's  decision,  if  it 
were  found  to  be  agreeable  to  the  canons  and  statutes  of 
the  Fathers,  and  not  inconsistent  with  the  judgements 
of  the  three  Popes  who  had  pronounced  their  decisions  in 
the  cause  ^.  Again  the  qualification  seems  to  have  stirred 
up  fresh  bitterness :  it  was  proposed  by  the  king  and  the 
archbishop, — so,  at  least,  Eddi  informs  us  •\ — that  Wilfrid 
should  give  up  all  his  houses,  so  that  he  would  not,  in  that 
case,  have  had  '  even  a  little  bit  of  a  single  dwelling '  in 
Northumbria  or  in  Mercia.  But  others,  hearing  this,  were 
disgusted  at  such  relentless  severity  ;  it  would  be  'impious' 
to  strip  a  person  of  such  well-known  eminence,  'famous 
through  all  the  nations  around,'  of  all  his  property, '  without 
convicting  him  of  any  capital  crime.'  At  last  his  adver- 
saries modified  their  proposal,  but  in  terms  which  showed 
not  only  the  jealousy,  but  the  alarm  which  Wilfrid's  mani- 
fold ability  and  energy  had  inspired : — Let  him  have  his 

^  This  we  learn  from  Eddi,  47. 

^  See  Wilfrid's  speech  at  Rome,  Eddi,  53.  Eadmer  says  that  they 
caught  up  his  words  and  said,  '  One  canonical  rule  of  Theodore's  is,  that 
disobedient  persons  should  be  put  down.' 

^  Eddi,  47. 


442  Wilfrid's  second  appeal. 

CHAP.  XIII.  monastery  of  St.  Peter  at  Ripon,  with  all  that  pertained  to 
it, — but  on  this  condition,  to  which  his  written  assent  was 
required,  that  he  should  not  without  the  king's  leave  go 
beyond  the  precincts  of  the  monastery,  nor  perform  any 
episcopal^  act, — a  condition  which,  as  Eddi  expresses  it, 
would  amount  to  a  self-deprivation.  The  spirit  of  Wilfrid 
took  fire  at  such  a  suggestion.  He  broke  forth  into  an 
indignant  recital  of  his  services  to  religion  in  Northumbrian . 
'  Was  it  not  I  who  laboured,  before  any  one  else  took  the 
work  in  hand,  to  root  out  the  evil  plant  of  Scotic  usages  ? 
Was  it  not  I  who  converted  all  Northumbria  to  the  true 
Easter  and  the  crown-shaped  tonsure,  who  established 
antiphonal  chanting,  who  organized  the  monastic  life 
according  to  the  rule  of  the  holy  father  Benedict,  which 
no  one  before  me  had  brought  in  ^  ?  And  now,  after  nearly 
forty  years  spent  in  the  episcopate  *,  you  ask  me,  in  effect, 
to  condemn  myself,  when  I  know  of  no  crime  that  can  be 
charged  against  me ;  I  am  to  resign  my  office,  on  account 
of  this  question  that  has  but  lately  come  up.  No,  indeed  ! 
Wilfrid's  I  appeal  to  the  Apostolic  see:  whosoever  would  wish  to 
appeal.  depose  me,  let  him  meet  me,  as  I  this  day  challenge  him  to 
meet  me,  at  iliat  tribunal.'  One  seems  to  hear  the  raised 
tone  ^,  to  see  the  proud  and  wrathful  look,  with  which  the 
indomitable  man,  at  sixty-eight,  confronted  and  defied  his 
opponents,  secular  and  hierarchical.  They  were,  however, 
neither  abashed  nor  overawed.  The  new  appeal  was  a  new 
offence :  '  He  is  all  the  more  blamable,'  said  the  king  and 
the  archbishop, '  in  that  he  has  chosen  to  be  judged  at  Rome 

^  '  Sacerdotalis  officii '  must  have  this  sense.  Eadmer  says  that  he  was 
advised  to  accept  these  terms,  and  use  the  opportunity  for  a  contemplative 
life.  But  he  well  knew  the  source  whence  this  counsel  emanated,  and 
answered  that  the  ^  gift  of  counsel '  had  in  it  nothing  of  duplicity.  All 
this  is  Eadmer's  invention  ;  it  is  what  he  thought  likely  to  have  been  said. 

"^  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  141  ;  Milman,  ii.  269  ;  Raine,  i.  73. 

3  '  Of  his  noble  apostolic  labours,  his  conversion  of  the  heathen,  his 
cultivation  of  arts  and  letters,  his  stately  buildings,  his  monasteries,  he 
said  nothing ; '  Milman,  ii.  269.  0\\  his  relation  to  the  Benedictine  rule 
see  above,  p.  249. 

*  If  he  was  consecrated  early  in  665,  he  had  been  a  bishop,  by  this  time, 
for  thirty-seven  years.     Eddi,  47  ;  Fridegod,  1096.     See  above,  p.  241. 

'  *  Intrepida  voce  elevata  ; '  Eddi.  *  Fecit  ille  quod  erat  constantissimi 
praesulis  ; '  Smith's  Bede,  p.  756. 


Wilfrid  again  in  Mercia,  443 

rather  than  by  us.'  Aldfrid  even  added  a  proposal  to  have  chap.  xm. 
Wilfrid  put  under  arrest  ^  that  he  might  be  effectually  com- 
pelled to  be  content  with  home-authorities  '  for  one  while.' 
But  this  was  too  much  for  the  other  bishops :  they  agreed 
to  the  sentence  of  deposition  from  episcopal  dignity,  but 
they  would  not  violate  the  safe-conduct  without  which,  as 
they  said,  Wilfrid  would  not  have  ventured  to  come  to 
Easterfield.  Let  him  go  without  hindrance ;  '  and  let  us, 
too,  go  quietly  to  our  own  homes.'  'After  this  conversation 
the  fruitless  Council  ^  was  dissolved.' 

Wilfrid  returned  into  Mercia,  and  reported  to  Ethelred  Wilfrid  in 
what  the  bishops  had  said  at  Easterfield, '  against  Ethelred's 
own  directions,'  as  Eddi  tells  us,  alluding  to  some  letter 
which  the  Mercian  king  had  apparently  written  on  his 
behalf.  'And  what  do  you  mean  to  do,'  asked  Wilfrid,  '  as 
to  the  lands  which  I  hold  in  your  kingdom -^ ? '  'I  mean,' 
said  Ethelred,  '  to  add  no  new  trouble  to  your  trouble.  I 
will  keep  those  lands  for  you  until  I  can  send  messengers, 
or  a  letter,  with  you  to  Rome,  to  ask  for  instructions  as 
to  my  conduct.'  Far  diflferent  was  the  conduct  of  some 
who,  as  Eddi  says  *,  '  usurped  possession  of  Wilfrid's  inheri- 
tance.' One  is  loth  to  think  that  Bosa  or  John  would 
personally  go  to  such  extremities  as  are  described ;  but  we 
are  told  that  the  usurpers  treated  Wilfrid  and  the  members 
of  his  monastic  communities  as  excommunicate.  If  any  of 
them,  at  the  request  of  a  layman,  were  to  bless  food  with 
the  sign  of  the  cross,  it  was  to  be  flung  away  as  if  it  had 
been  an  offering  to  idols :  even  the  vessels  used  by  them  at 
meals  ^  were  to  be  washed,  before  others  might  handle  them 
without  incurring  ceremonial  pollution. 

In  this  state  of  public  opinion,  when  a  deep  and  per- 
sistent antipathy  ^  was  making  itself  felt  against  the  exile 

*  '  Si  praecipis,  pater,  opprimam  eum  per  violentiam  ;  *  Malmesb.  G.  P. 
iii.  104. 

^  '  Inutile  concilium  ;  *  Eddi,  48. 

'  He  said  nothing,  Smith  observes,  about  any  bishopric  as  belonging  to 
him  in  Mercia.     He  regarded  himself  as  there  a  lomm  tenens. 

*  Eddi,  49. 

'  *  Vasa  de  quibus  nostri  vescebantur.' 

*  The  existence  of  such  a  feeling  is  sufficient  proof  that,  in  Northumbria 


444  Aldhelm. 

CHAP.  XIII.  and  the  appellant,  there  was  some  reason  to  expect  that  the 
pressure  might  be  too  great  for  the  fidelity  of  some  of  his 
monks  or  clerics, — that  they  might  be  scared  into  forsaking 
as  hopeless  the  cause  of  '  a  man  forbid.'     It  was  therefore 

Aldhelm.  an  act  of  opportune  generosity  when  the  man  who  stood 
highest  in  ecclesiastical  reputation  throughout  the  English 
Churches,  the  unrivalled  scholar, — the  admired  writer, — 
the  popular  and  venerated  abbot,  Aldhelm  of  Malmesbury, 
interposed  to  inspirit  and  exhort  the  adherents  of  Wilfrid. 
We  have  already  seen  how  Aldhelm  had  succeeded  to  the 
abbacy  at  Malmesbury ;  his  administration  was  brilliantly 
successful ;  the  community  which  had  grown  out  of  a  little 
knot  of  scholars  gathering  round  a  foreign  teacher  beneath 
the  walls  of  an  old  fortress  had  '  broken  forth  on  the  right 
hand  and  on  the  left,'  for  Aldhelm  had  been  enabled  to 
found  another  monastery  at  Frome,  and  another  yet  at 
Bradford- on- A  von  \  and  the  very  ancient  little  church 
remaining  at  the  latter  place  has  been  thought  to  be 
actually  of  his  building.  King  Ine  had  given  several  lands 
for  the  augmentation  of  the  parent  monastery  ^ :  there  had 
been  '  a  rush  along  all  roads,'  as  W^illiam  of  Malmesbury 
expresses  it,  '  to  Aldhelm  ^ : '  and  among  his  disciples  was 
Pecthelm,  who  afterwards  held  the  restored  bishopric  of 
St.  Ninian  at  Whithern   or  Candida   Casa*.     He  was   a 

at  any  rate,  there  was  a  powerful  mass  of  opinion  which,  in  a  practical 
sense,  might  be  called  anti-papal.  In  other  districts  the  feeling  was 
different. 

^  Faricius,  Vit.  Aldh.  c.  2 ;  Malmesb.  G.  Pontif.  v.  198.  When  he 
wrote  the  church  of  Frome  was  still  standing,  and  so,  he  says,  was  the 
'  ecclesiola '  of  St.  Laurence  at  Bradford ;  but  the  monasteries  had 
perished.  On  the  church  at  Bradford  see  Freeman,  Engl.  Towns  and 
Distr.,  p.  140  ;  Parker,  Intr.  Goth.  Arch.,  p.  15.  Aldhelm  also  (ib.  v.  217) 
built  a  church  near  Wareham  in  Dorset,  which  in  the  twelfth  century 
still  existed,  unroofed,  save  for  a  prominence  just  above  the  altar  :  within 
its  precinct,  it  was  said,  rain  never  fell. 

^  Kemble  admits  tjiis  charter,  which  belongs  \o  701 ;  Cod.  Bipl.  i.  55. 
The  Mercian  sub-king  Berthwald,  who  had  been  so  friendly  to  Wilfrid, 
gave  a  piece  of  land  on  the  Teme  to  Aldhelm's  monastery  ;  and  Ethelred 
attested  the  grant  in  a  '  synod  '  held  at  Burford,  July  30,  685 ;  Cod. 
Dipl.  i.  30. 

2  *  Currebatur  ad  Aldelmum  totis  semitis  ; '  Malmesb,  G.  Pontiff,  v.  200. 

*  Malmesb.  iii.  115.  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  7.  Bede  knew  Pecthelm  : 
see  v.  13,  18,  23.    He  lived  as '  deacon  or  monk '  under  Aldhelm  as  bishop. 


Aldhelm.  445 

friend  and  correspondent  of  the  scholarly  king  of  Northum-  chap.  xm. 
bria ;  and  Artwil,  the  scholarly  son  of  an  Irish  king,  sub- 
mitted to  Aldhelm  all  his  literary  compositions,  which  were 
not  few  in  number  ^.  The  fame  of  the  learned  West-Saxon 
abbot  had  reached  the  ears  of  Pope  Sergius,  who  invited 
him  to  Rome^,  allowed  him  to  celebrate  in  the  Lateran 
basilica  ^,  and  sent  him  home  with  a  letter  of  privilege  for 
his  monasteries  *,  a  store  of  relics,  and  a  massive  altar  of 
white  marble,  which  he  gave  to  King  Ine,  who  placed  it 
in  the  royal  '  vicus '  of  Bruton  ^.  Traditions  spoke  of  the 
rapturous  joy  with  which  Aldhelm's  return  was  welcomed, 
when  monks  met  him  with  cross  and  thurible  and  pro- 
cessional chant,  and  laymen  expressed  their  delight  by 
dancing  or  by  other  ^  gestures  of  the  body  ^.'  He  was,  we 
cannot  doubt,  the  most  popular  of  monks  or  priests :  his 
scholars  loved  him  passionately,  as  their  '  most  loving 
teacher  of  pure  learning  "^ ' ;  and  he  well  deserved  their 
affection  by  the  tender  thoughtful  interest  with  which  he 
watched  over  their  progress  ^,  and  after  they  had  left  him 
still  exhorted  them,  in  extant  letters,  to  avoid  youthful 
follies,  such  as  daily  drinking-bouts,  protracted  f eastings, 
or  any  excess  in  amusements  ^, — to  prefer   the  study  of 

^  Malmesb.  G.  P.  v.  191. 

2  So  says  Faricius  :  'Hunc.  .  .  Sergius  a sciverat,  quia  .  .  .  de  eo  persaepe 
audierat  ; '  c.  2.  Malmesbury  says  he  went  in  order  to  get  '  privileges ' 
for  his  monasteries,  but  before  setting  out,  built  a  church  at  Wareham, 
the  roofless  walls  of  which  still  existed.  Among  Aldhelm's  verses  are 
some  in  honour  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paiil,  composed  while  he  '■  was  entering 
their  church  at  Rome  '  (i.  e.  St.  Peter's).     He  invokes  them  both. 

3  Faricius  has  a  tale  of  wonder  about  his  chasuble  being  supported  on 
a  sunbeam.  Then  comes  another,  about  his  clearing  the  pope,  by  miracle, 
from  a  calumny.  Com  p.  Malmesb.  v.  218,  that  this  red  chasuble,  pre- 
served in  the  abbey,  showed  *  the  saint  to  have  been  a  tall  man,*  as 
did  his  relics. 

*  Faricius  and  Malm.  v.  220. 

'  Malmesb.  v.  222.  He  inclines  to  think  that  a  camel  bore  this  'moles' 
to  the  foot  of  the  Alps;  but  there  the  beast  of  burden,  camel  or  not, 
*  stumbled  '  ;  the  altar  was  broken,  but  miraculously  put  together  again, 
&c.     It  was  extant  '  ad  banc  diem.* 

^  Malmesb.  1.  c. 

''  *  Mi  amantissime  purae  institutionis  praeceptor ;  *  Epist.  6,  Ethelwald 
to  Aldhelm. 

*  '  Ab  ipsis  tenerrimae  cunabulis  infantiae  fovendo,  amando,'  &c. ;  Ep.  6. 

*  Ep.    10,  Aldh.  to  Ethelwald.     He  mentions   'equitandi  vagatione 


446    Aldhehn  writes  to  '  Wilfrid's  clerks* 

CHAP.  XIII.  Scripture  to  immoral  specimens  of  heathen  poetry, — to 
keep  clear  of  all  sensuality,  and  to  be  simple  in  dress  and 
habits, — and  in  all  secular  studies  to  keep  in  view  sacred 
knowledge  as  the  end  to  which  all  other  lore  should 
minister  ^.  He  himself  had  practised,  in  this  matter,  what 
he  taught  ^  :  his  literary  activity  never  chilled  or  suspended 
his  devotions  :  when  he  concludes  his  book  on  Metres  with 
a  pious  aspiration  'that  abundance  of  things  perishable 
may  not  prove  to  be  poverty  in  the  world  to  come,'  one 
seems  to  see  into  his  mind  ^,  and  to  understand  the  moral 
and  spiritual  force  exercised  by  one  who  is  enthusiastically 
described  in  his  capacity  as  a  scholar,  and  as  a  teacher  and 
controversialist,  in  the  words  of  his  Malmesbury  biographer, 
— '  wonderful  in  each  of  his  qualities,  and  peerless  in 
them  all  \' 

Such  was  the  man  who  now  wrote  'to  the  clerks  of 
Bishop  Wilfrid  ^,'  entreating  them  not  to  be  '  scandalized ' 
by  the  raging  storm  that  had  broken  over  the  Church,  even 
if  some  of  them  had  to  share  their  prelate's  lot  in  expulsion 
from  home  and  compulsory  wanderings  abroad.  Let  them 
not  be  thankless  to  one  who  had  lovingly  trained  them  up 
from  early  childhood  to  opening  manhood ;  let  them  cling  to 
him,  as  bees  cling  to  their  monarch  ^  through  all  weathers  ; 
let  them  remember  the  scorn  and  derision  which  would  be 
poured  out  on  laymen  who  forsook  a  kind  lord  in  his 
adversity ;  '  and  what,  then,'  he  proceeds,  '  will  be  said  of 
you,  if  you  leave  a  bishop  who  nourished  and  brought  you 
up,  alone  in  his  exile  ? ' 

The  persons  addressed  appear  to  have  responded  to  the 
exhortation  '^,     Solemn  prayers  and  fasts,  on  the  part  of  all 

culpabili '  (cp.  Bede,  v.  6),  with  *  conviviis  usu  frequentiore  ac  prolixiore 
inhoneste  superfluis,'  the  latter  a  coarse  Saxon  habit  :  see  above,  p.  268. 
On  the  *  commessationes '  and  *  potationes  *  in  the  cells  at  Coldingham, 
see  Bede,  iv.  25  ;  above,  p.  290. 

^  Ep.  13,  to  a  Wilfrid,  going  to  study  in  Ireland. 

^  So  Malmesbury  says  generally  of  him,  v.  213.     Cp.  Lingard,  ii.  187. 

^  See  too  the  pious  little  Epist.  2. 

*  Malmesb.  v.  200.  He  says  that  Aldhelm  was  like  lightning  in  con- 
futing adversaries,  but  soft  as  nectar  in  his  instructions  to  pupils. 

*  Epist.  II  ;  Malmesb.  v.  192  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  254. 

^  A  A;mgr-bee,  according  to  Aldhelm:  *Rex  earum  spissis  sodalium 
agminibus  vallatus/  &c.  ^  Eddi,  50. 


Acca, 


447 


Wilfrid's  monastic  communities,  preceded  his  departure,  chap.  xm. 
Among  those  who  accompanied  him  was  a  man  in  several  Acca. 
respects  like-minded  to  himself,  and  who  lived  to  do  good 
service  to  the  Northumbrian  Church,  and,  indirectly  at 
least,  to  the  ecclesiastical  literature  of  England.  This  was 
Acca,  afterwards  for  some  twenty-three  years  bishop  of 
Hexham.  He  had  been  '  trained  up  from  boyhood  among 
the  clergy  of  Bosa  \'  but  attached  himself  to  Wilfrid  '  in 
the  hope  of  a  better  plan  of  life  ^.'  He  was  thoroughly 
imbued  with  Wilfrid's  love  of  ecclesiastical  magnificence; 
and  when  he  had  the  opportunity,  he  distinguished  himself 
in  the  adornment  and  enrichment  of  churches,  in  the  collec- 
tion of  theological  books,  in  the  organization  of  a  school  of 
Church  music, — '  for  he  himself  was  a  very  skilful  chanter.' 
His  own  learning  was  considerable,  his  orthodoxy  exact,  his 
observance  of  all  ecclesiastical  rules  punctilious.  But  our 
chief  reason  for  gratitude  to  his  memory  is  his  practical 
encouragement  of  the  labours  of  Bede,  who  loved  him  much. 
We  find  that  he  requested  Bede  to  collect,  as  from  '  a  flower- 
ing paradise,'  the  best  thoughts  of  the  Fathers  on  the  begin- 
ning of  Genesis,  for  the  sake  of  those  who  had  not  access  to 
the  originals  ^,  To  him  also  Bede  addressed  a  tract  on  the 
Temple  of  Solomon,  which  seems  to  have  been  written 
when  Acca  had  some  troubles  to  endure  ^ ;  and  an  allegori- 
cal exposition  of  the  First  Book  of  Samuel,  which  Acca  had 
requested  him  to  undertake  ^.  Some  questions  which  Acca 
propounded  as  to  the  '  stations '  of  the  Israelites  in  their 
wanderings,  and  as  to  the  mysterious  text,  '  They  shall  be 

^  See  Bede's  account  of  him,  v.  20  :  '  Strenuissimus,  et  coram  Deo  et 
hominibus  magnificus  .  .  .  cantator  peritissimus  ...  in  litteris  Sanctis 
doctissimus,  in  catholicae  fidei  confessione  castissimus,  in  ecclesiasticae 
quoque  institutionis  regulis  sollertissimus.'  '  Utpote  qui  a  pueritia  in 
clero  .  .  .  Bosa  .  .  .  nutritus  atque  eruditus  erat,'  &c.  Cp.  Eddi,  22.  He 
succeeded  Wilfrid  as  bishop  of  Hexham,  but  was  expelled  in  732  ;  Sim. 
Dur.  Hist.  Reg.  31  :  and  Skene  conjectures  that  he  may  have  brought 
*  St.  Andrew's  relics '  from  Hexham  to  '  Kilrymont,'  or  St.  Andrews  ; 
Celtic  Scotl.  ii.  273. 

*  He  may  have  accompanied  Wilfrid  into  Sussex :  but  this  is  not  proved 
by  the  reference  to  him  in  iv.  14,  and  he  is  not  mentioned  in  iv.  13. 

^  Bed.  Op.  i.  169  and  vii.  i  (Giles).  Mr.  Plummer  points  out  that  the 
true  reading  in  the  latter  reference  is  'antistiti/  not  'abbati.' 

*  lb.  i.  171 ;  viii.  263.  *  lb.  i.  195  ;  vii.  369. 


448  Wilfrid^ s  last  journey  to  Rome, 

CHAP.  XIII.  shut  up  in  prison,  and  after  many  days  shall  be  visited,' 
diverted  Bede  for  a  while  from  the  work  on  the  book  of 
Samuel  ^  And  Acca's  influence  was  effectual  in  regard  to 
Bede's  writings  on  the  New  Testament ;  we  find  that  Bede 
sent  him,  for  transcription,  a  work  on  the  Apocalypse ;  and 
he  then  wrote  to  Bede,  exhorting  him  to  compile  a  Patristic 
commentary  on  St.  Luke.  Bede  sent  him,  by  way  of  instal- 
ment, a  work  on  the  Acts  ^  :  after  reading  which,  as  we  leam 
from  a  very  interesting  letter  of  Acca,  prefixed  to  the 
'  Exposition  of  St.  Luke's  Gospel  ^,'  Acca,  both  in  conversa- 
tion and  by  letters,  urged  him  to  comment  on  that  Gospel, 
and  replied,  not  without  playfulness*,  and  with  several 
allusions  to  great  Fathers,  to  his  excuses  for  not  attempting 
such  a  task.  The  urgency,  so  affectionate  and  so  delicate 
in  its  tone,  was  irresistible :  and  Bede  at  once  set  to  work, 
'  dictating/  as  he  says,  '  to  himself,  and  writing  from  his 
own  dictation  ^!  Acca,  with  many  other  brethren,  pressed 
him  further  to  write  on  the  Gospel  of  St.  Mark, — a  work 
not  accomplished  until  after  a  long  interval  ^.  It  is  worth 
while  to  glance  at  these  occasions  on  which  Bede,  as  com- 
mentator on  Scripture,  introduces  his  readers  to  Acca  as  to 
'the  dearest  and  most  loving  of  prelates  that  live  on  the 
earth,'  his  '  most  beloved  and  truly  blessed  lord  '^.' 

Such  a  companion  as  this — so  loyal,  sympathetic,  and 
intelligent — must  have  been  indeed  a  solace  to  Wilfrid,  on 
this  his  third  journey  to  '  the  Apostles'  threshold.'  Twenty- 
five  ^  years  had  passed  since  his  former  appeal ;  and  now, 

1  Bede,  Op.  i.  198  ff. 
"  lb.  i.  184  ;  xii.  i. 

^  lb.  X.  265.  The  bishop  begins,  '  Reverendissimo  in  Christo  fratri  et 
consacerdoti  Bedae  presbytero.' 

*  Bede  had  quoted  the  proverb,  *  Why  put  fish  into  the  sea  ?  *  Acca 
replies,  *  Juxta  comicum,  Nihil  sit  dictum  quod  non  sit  dictum  prius;  * 
and  urges  the  claim  of  charity.  He  desires  Bede  to  prefix  his  letter  to 
the  Exposition  when  completed,  in  order  to  show  that  he  had  written  it 
*  non  ob  aliam  quam  condescension  is  fraternae  gratiam.' 

'  Bede,  Op.  i.  1 79 ;  x.  268  :  '  Mox  lectis  tuae  dulcissimae  sanctitatis 
paginulis,  injuncti  me  operis  labori  supposui,  in  quo  .  .  .  ipse  mihi  dictator 
simul  notarius  et  librarius  existerem.'     *  Librarius '  =  copyist. 

«  lb.  i.  177  (Ep.  8)  ;  x.  2. 

'  Bede,  vii.  369,  Introd.  to  Samuel ;  and  i.  184,  Ep.  10. 

*  He  probably  set  forth  late  in  703,  and  wintered  in  Frisia. 


His  reception  by  Pope  John  VI .         449 

after  many  disappointments  and  troubles,  and  after  a  period  chap.  xm. 
of  tranquillity  which  had  seemed  likely  to  be  permanent, 
the  work  had  to  be  done  all  over  again ; — although  the  prece- 
dent of  Agatho's  decision  would  be  morally  certain  to  sway 
the  councils  of  Rome,  yet  the  treatment  of  that  decision  by 
English  authorities  might  easily  be  repeated  in  regard  to 
a  new  sentence.  But  Wilfrid's  heart  did  not  fail  him  :  Wilfrid's 
he  went  forth,  to  all  appearance,  with  the  same  cheerful  ^^^^J 
courage  as  on  the  previous  occasion :  his  journey  across  the 
continent  was  made  on  foot  ^,  in  spite  of  his  seventy  years, 
and  included  a  visit,  which  must  have  been  full  of  interest, 
to  Archbishop  Willibrord,  in  Frisia,  when  the  conversation 
often  turned  on  the  wonderful  things  which,  according  to 
Willibrord,  had  been  wrought  in  that  province  by  contact 
with  relics  of  the  holy  king  Oswald.  The  archbishop  also 
told  a  story  of  his  own  sojourn  in  Ireland,  about  the 
recovery  of  an  Irish  student  from  the  pestilence,  after 
drinking  water  into  which  Willibrord  had  dipped  a  splinter 
of  the  oaken  stake  on  which  Oswald's  head  had  been  fixed  : 
the  sick  man,  he  assured  his  hearers,  not  only  regained 
health,  but  passed  from  his  former  irreligiousness  to  a 
thoroughness  of  Christian  devotion  ^. 

In  due  time  Wilfrid  and  his  companions  found  themselves  Pope  John 
once  more  at  Rome,  probably  in  the  early  part  of  704. 
The  existing  Pope  was  John  VI,  who  had  been  consecrated 
in  the  October  of  701  ^.  He  gave  Wilfrid  a  speedy 
audience.  The  bishop  presented  to  him,  as  he  had  presented 
to  Agatho,  a  written  memorial ;  and  said  that  he  had  come 
to  *  that  most  glorious  see,  as  to  a  mother's  bosom  '^^  and  not 
for  the  purpose  of  accusing  any  one,  but  in  order  to  meet 
any  charges  that  might  be  brought  against  him  in  the 
presence  of  the  Roman  Council.  If  they  were  true,  he 
would  confess  them  to  be  true ;  if  they  were  false,  he  was 
ready  to  refute  them.     The  Pope  received  the  petitioners 

^  *  Pedestri  gressu  ; '  Eddi,  50. 
^  Bede,  iii.  13.     See  above,  p.  177. 

^  On  the  virtues  of  this  pope,  as  a  peace-maker  and  a  ransomer  of 
captives,  see  Milman,  ii.  336  ;  Hodgkin,  vi.  363.     He  died  Jan.  9,  705. 
*  Eddi,  50.     Cp.  Bede,  v.  19,  'veniensque  Romam/  &c. 


450  Council  of  Rome, 

CHAP.  XIII.  kindly, — the  account  unites  Wilfrid  closely  with  his 
attendant  priests  and  deacons;  and  they  enjoyed  some 
days  of  repose  in  a  lodging  freely  provided  for  them. 
Meanwhile  certain  envoys  from  the  archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury arrived  with  written  charges  against  Wilfrid.  It  is 
surprising  to  find  that  only  one  of  them  was  even  in 
deacon's  orders  ^.  They,  like  Wilfrid,  formally  craved 
Roman  a  hearing ;  and  John  assembled  a  synod  of  the  neighbour- 
Synod.  •  j^g  bishops  together  with  their  attendant  clergy.  Wilfrid's 
memorial  was  read.  It  addressed  Pope  John  by  that 
epithet  of  '  universal '  which,  a  little  more  than  a  century 
before,  had  been  rejected  and  reprobated  by  the  greatest  of 
his  predecessors  ^.  In  substance  it  was  to^his  effect :  '  Once 
more,  I  invoke  your  see.  I  doubt  not  that  you  will  adhere 
to  the  decisions  of  your  predecessors ;  for  myself,  I  accept 
whatever  you  may  ordain.  I  come  hither,  because  disturb- 
ances have  arisen  in  Britain  on  the  part  of  those  who,  con- 
trary to  the  decree  of  Pope  Agatho,  took  possession  of  my 
bishopric,  my  monasteries,  my  lands.  I  now  ask  that  what 
was  ordered  by  Agatho,  by  Benedict,  and  by  Sergius,  may 
be  confirmed.  But  I  am  ready  to  meet  any  charges  against 
me  :  let  me  have  my  accusers  face  to  face.  I  also  ask  that 
Ethelred  king  of  the  Mercians  may  be  commanded,  for  the 
comfort  of  my  life  ^,  to  protect  my  monasteries  in  his  realm 
from  disturbance, — as  indeed  he  desires  to  do, — in  accord- 
ance with  the  directions  of  former  Popes.  And  I  earnestly 
beg  that  King  Aldfrid  may  be  adjured  *  to  comply  with 
the  decisions  of  Pope  Agatho  and  his  Council ;  or,  if  that 
should  seem  too  much,  let  the  see  of  York  be  disposed  of  as 
you  will, — but  at  least  let  me  have  Ripon  and  Hexham. 
And  I  promise  to  show  all  brotherly  charity,  and  all  due 
reverence,  to  Archbishop  Bertwald,  if  he  will  treat  me 
according  to  the  decrees  of  your  predecessors  ^.' 


^  'Unus  diaconus,  et  alii  omnes  sine  aliquo  ecclesiasticae  dignitatis 
gradu ; '  Eddi,  53.     Compare  ib.  50,  53,  on  these  '  legati '  and  '  nuntii.' 
2  See  above,  p.  71. 

^  '  De  vitae  nostrae  solatio  imperare  dignemini  ; '  Eddi,  51. 
*  *  Obsecretis.' 
'"  Malmesbury,  G.  P.  iii.  104,  abbreviates  this. 


Council  of  Rome.  451 

The  memorial  having  been  read,  Wilfrid  and  his  com-  chap.  xm. 
panions  were  allowed  to  return  to  their  lodging.  Bertwald's 
envoys  were  then  admitted,  and  their  paper  of  accusations 
was  read.  They  also  were  bidden  to  retire,  with  a  promise 
of  a  regular  hearing  at  a  future  time.  Pope  John  then  told 
the  Council  that  it  was  necessary  to  go  through  the  docu- 
ments on  both  sides.  This  was  agreed  to  :  a  second  sitting 
took  place,  in  which  the  accused  and  the  accusers  met,  and 
each  charge  was  taken  separately.  The  first  was,  '  Wilfrid 
contumaciously  refused  to  comply  with  the  synodical  decree 
of  Bertwald,  who  was  sent  from  this  Apostolic  see  ^'  a  clause 
in  which  one  of  Theodore's  strong  points  was  ingeniously 
transferred  to  Bertwald.  Wilfrid  then  rose,  and  gave  his 
account  of  what  had  passed  at  Easterfield  :  it  was  accepted 
by  the  Council.  '  And  then,'  says  Eddi,  '  they  began  to  talk 
in  Greek  among  themselves  ^,  with  subdued  smiles,  and 
keeping  us  in  the  dark ; '  '  and  afterwards  said  to  the 
accusers,' — one  can  imagine  the  smooth  Italian  politeness 
barely  hiding  a  quiet  sneer, — 'You  are  well  aware,  dear 
brethren,  that  according  to  the  canons,  when  the  accusers 
of  a  cleric  fail  to  prove  the  first  point  of  their  charge,  they 
are  not  allowed  to  go  on  to  the  rest.  However,  out  of 
respect  to  the  archbishop  sent  from  this  Apostolic  see,  and 
to  Bishop  Wilfrid  here  present,  we  will  go  thoroughly  into 
the  whole  case,  spending  days  or  months,  if  need  be,  in 
bringing  it  to  a  conclusion.'  The  Council  again  adjourned  : 
and,  strange  as  it  seems,  devoted  no  less  than  seventy 
sittings,  during  four  months,  to  a  full  investigation.  At 
last,  the  record  of  Wilfrid's  presence  and  testimony  at  the 
Roman  Council  of  Easter  Tuesday  in  680  on  the  subject  of 
Monothelitism  was  publicly  read,  'in  the  Roman  fashion, 
before  all  the  people '  who  were  present  at  the  last  of  the 
seventy  sittings,  and  we  are  told  that '  all  the  wise  citizens 
of  Rome  were  astonished  when  they  heard  it  read.'  When 
the  reader's  voice  stopped,  all  began  to  ask  each  other, 
'  Who  is    this   Bishop    Wilfrid  ^  ? '      And   then   Boniface, 

^  Eddi,  53  :  *  Hoc  est  primum  capitulum,*  &c. 

2  '  Inter  se  Graecizantes,'  &c.  ;  Eddi.     The  pope  was  himself  a  Greek. 

3  Bede,  v.  19  :  *  Quod  ubi  lectum  est,'  &c. 

Gg2 


45a  Decision  of  the  Council, 

CHAP.  XIII.  '  a  counsellor  of  the  Pope,'  and  Sisinnius  ^,  with  others,  who 
had  seen  Wilfrid  at  Rome  in  679-680,  declared  that  the 
appellant  now  present  was  the  same  Wilfrid  whom  ^  Agatho 
had  acquitted  and  sent  home,  and  who  now,  unhappily,  had 
been  again  compelled  to  leave  his  own  see  after  an  episco- 
pate of  about  forty  years  ;  what  was  to  be  said  of  the  men 
who  had  dared  to  present  false  documents,  as  containing 
accusations  against  him,  in  that  venerable  presence  ?     Did 
not  they  deserve  to  wear  out  their  lives  in  a  dungeon? 
'  And  the  Romans  affirmed,  "  You  say  the  truth."  '     Here, 
perhaps,  we  may  suppose  Eddi  to  have  indulged  in  amplifi- 
cation :  but  the  next  words,  in  which  Pope  John  declared 
Wilfrid   to   be   innocent,   must   be   substantially   genuine. 
Decision     '  We   find  ^  after   full   inquiry,  that  no   crime  is   proved 
S^  nod        against  Bishop  Wilfrid.     Let  him  be  acquitted  by  authority 
of  the  Prince  of  the  Apostles,  who  has  power  to  bind  and 
loose  from  hidden  ofiences.     What  Agatho,  Benedict,  and 
Sergius  decreed  concerning  him,  our  humility,  with  consent 
of  the  synod,  has  resolved  to  affirm,  by  writings  sent  to  the 
kings  and  the  archbishop.'    Accordingly  John  wrote  a  letter 
to  Ethelred  and  Aldfrid.     Pope  Agatho,  he  said,  had  con- 
sidered the  charges  against  Wilfrid,  and  had  rejected  them. 
His  successors  had  followed  his  judgement :  Theodore  him- 
self had  not,  to  all  appearance,  resisted, — had  sent  no  new 
accusation, — had  rather,  according  to  his  own  statements, 
rendered   obedience.      So  much  for  the  past.      As  to  the 
present,  the  accusers  had  not   proved  their  case  against 
How  modi-  Wilfrid ;  rather,  he  had  refuted  them.     The  Council  had 
Pope  John,  gone  minutely  into  the  question.     But  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  and  Bishop  Wilfrid  ought  to  meet  face  to  face : 

^  They  are  named  in  that  account  of  a  smaller  council  which  does  not 
mention  Wilfrid,  and  is  probably  an  invention.     See  above,  p.  330. 

^  Eddi.  As  Bede  puts  it,  '  who  after  a  thorough  investigation  and 
hearing  of  both  sides  was  found  by  pope  Agathoto  have  been  unrighteously 
expelled  from  his  see,  and  was  held  by  him  in  such  esteem  that  he  ordered 
him  to  take  his  seat  in  a  Council  of  bishops  ...  as  a  man  of  pure  faith 
and  upright  character.'  Bede  corrects  Eddi's  '  forty  years  and  more  *  to 
'  nearly  forty  years.' 

'  Eddi,  53.  *  They  all  said,  together  with  the  pontiff,  that  a  man  of  such 
high  position  .  .  .  ought  by  no  means  to  be  condemned,  but  to  return 
home  with  honour,  entirely  acquitted  of  all  charges  ; '  Bede. 


Letter  of  Pope  John.  453 

the  former  therefore  was  now  ordered  to  assemble  a  synod  chap.  xm. 
together  with  Wilfrid,  and  then  to  summon  the  Bishops 
Bosa  and  John,  and  hear  both  sides.  If  the  result  should 
be  a  synodical  settlement,  that  would  be  best  for  both  sides ; 
failing  this^,  let  the  parties  be  admonished  to  repair  to- 
gether to  Rome,  that  the  case  might  be  finally  settled  in 
a  larger  Council.  Whosoever  should  delay  to  come,  or 
('  which  is  to  be  abhorred ')  refuse  to  come,  would  incur 
deprivation.  The  kings  were  then  exhorted  to  promote 
peace,  and  to  remember  the  decision  which  several  Popes 
had  given  as  with  one  mouth ;  and  so  they  were  commended 
to  the  Divine  keeping. 

Truly  a  characteristic  document,  one  is  disposed  to  say, 
was  this  letter  of  Pope  John.  He  felt  himself  to  be  in 
a  difficulty.  On  the  one  hand,  he  and  his  Council  had 
come  to  the  same  conclusion  with  former  Popes,  and  that 
was  a  conclusion  in  favour  of  Wilfrid.  On  the  other  hand, 
experience  had  shown  that  a  Roman  decree  was  by  no 
means  sure  to  be  all-powerful  with  English  kings  and  their 
ecclesiastical  advisers.  It  would  not  be  wise  to  issue  too 
stringent  a  mandate ;  yet  it  would  be  scandalous  to  sacrifice 
Wilfrid,  or  compromise  Papal  consistency  and  authority. 
Therefore,  while  the  kings'  attention  is  solemnly  called  to 
the  Papal  judgements,  and  Theodore's  tardy  reconciliation 
with  Wilfrid  is  magnified  into  a  dutiful  acceptance  of  those 
judgements,  the  Pope's  letter  does  not  imperatively  demand 
the  carrying-out  of  the  decree  by  a  reinstatement  of  Wilfrid. 
The  dignity  of  Rome  is  saved,  yet  a  loophole  is  provided 
for  something  short  of  simple  obedience.  That  policy  of 
delay,  in  which  the  Roman  court  became  afterwards  so 
skilful,  is  resorted  to:  on  the  pretext  that  Bertwald  and 
Wilfrid  ought  personally  to  confront  each  other,  the  matter 
is  referred  to  a  synod  in  England,  and  Bertwald. is  soothed 
by  the  commission  to  hold  such  a  synod.  It  is  hoped  that 
by  this  means  the  quarrel  may  be  made  up  :  if  not,  another 

^  Here  Eddi's  text,  as  given  in  Raine,  is  not  clear  ;  as  in  Haddan  and 
Stubbs,  it  is  unintelligible.  Smith  reads,  '  moneat  ut  commonitionibus 
suis  quaeque  [quae  ?]  prodesse  suis  partibus  possunt  unaquaeque  (sc.  pars) 
consideret,  et  ad  banc  sedem,'  &c.     Smith's  Bede,  p.  758. 


454  Wilfrid  at  Meaux. 

CHAP.  XIII.  and  '  a  larger  Council '  at  Rome  can  be  summoned  to  effect 
that  settlement  which,  by  hypothesis,  a  four  months'  inquiry 
at  Rome  and  a  national  Council  in  Britain  would  have  failed 
to  effect :  thus  time  is  gained,  and  the  English  authorities 
are  not  alienated  by  severity^. 

By  this  time,  not  only  had  John  VI  found  it  desirable 
to  write  cautiously  to  Aldfrid,  but  Wilfrid  himself  had 
become  weary,  and  perhaps  for  the  first  time  despondent. 
He  wished  to  give  up  the  cause,  and  to  end  his  days  beside 
the  throne  of  St.  Peter  2.  But  its  occupant,  and  the  other 
bishops,  urged  him  to  return  home  and  finish  the  business, 
which  could  not  be  left  in  its  present  condition.  He  set 
forth  accordingly,  taking  a  last  farewell  of  the  sacred  city, 
and  carrying  with  him,  '  as  his  custom  was,'  a  store  of 
relics  duly  catalogued,  and  vestments  of  silk  and  purple 
for  churches, — together  with  the  letters  for  the  kings  and 
the  metropolitan ;  and  also,  probably,  a  letter,  still  extant  ^, 
in  which  Pope  John  informed  the  English  clergy  that  those 
of  their  body  who  had  lately  visited  Rome  had,  after  due 
deliberation,  on  the  vigil  of  St.  Gregory,  laid  aside  the 
'flowing  laic  garb,'  and  adopted  close  cassocks^  after  the 
Roman  fashion,— an  example  which  they  were  exhorted, 
*  by  apostolic  authority/  to  imitate. 
Wilfrid  at  The  homeward  journey  was  very  trying  to  the  aged 
Meaux.  bishop  ^.  He  became  very  ill,  and  after  travelling  on 
horseback  as  long  as  he  could,  was  carried  on  a  litter 
into  Meaux,  amid  the  wailing  prayers  ^  of  his  attendants, 
who  thought  that  they  were  about  to  lose  him  while  yet 
in  a  strange  land.  For  four  days  and*  nights  he  lay  as  in 
a  stupor,  never  tasting  food  or  drink,  and  giving  no  token 
of  life  save  by  a  faint  breathing  and  by  the  animal  warmth 
in  his  worn-out  frame '^.     At  last,  on  the  fifth  morning, 

^  John  VI  showed  diplomatic  ability  when  a  visit  of  the  Greek  '  exarch ' 
had  nearly  provoked  a  '  sedition  *  (Vit.  Pontif.). 
""  Eddi,  55. 

•"'  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  264. 
*  '  Talares  tunicas.'     See  above,  p.  7. 
5  Eddi,  56. 

^  '  Maerentium,  ad  Dominumque  clamantium  ; '  Eddi. 
'  Eddi ;  Bede,  v.  19,  says,  *  halitu  pertenui.' 


Wilfrid  welcomed  by  Ethelred,  455 

while  the  watchers  around  his  bed  were  weeping  and  chap.  xnr. 
reciting  psalms,  he  raised  himself  up  like  one  waking  from 
sleep,  and  asked,  'Where  is  Acca  the  presbyter?'  Acca 
came  in,  found  him  better  and  able  to  sit  up,  thanked  God^ 
and  afterwards  ^,  when  the  rest  were  gone  out,  heard  from 
Wilfrid  that  he  had  in  his  trance  seen  St.  Michael,  who  had 
told  him  that  he  should  live  four  years  longer  2.  The 
story  of  the  apparition  is  one  of  those  imaginations  which 
degrade  the  sacred  names  introduced ;  the  prolongation  of 
Wilfrid's  life  is  not  only  ascribed  to  the  intercession  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin,  but  the  Archangel  is  made  to  remind  the 
great  church-builder  that  he  had  '  never  reared  any  house 
for  St.  Mary/  and  that  '  he  had  to  amend  this '  defect  ^. 
That  some  such  dream  was  described  by  Wilfrid  to  Acca, 
who  told  it  to  Eddi,  is  not  to  be  doubted :  it  would  fall  in 
with  Wilfrid's  conceptions  on  such  a  subject.  The  bishop, 
Eddi  then  adds,  washed  his  face  and  hands  in  the  sight  of 
his  delighted  followers,  and, '  like  Jonathan,  felt  his  eyes  to 
be  enlightened  after  taking  some  food ; '  after  a  few  days 
he  resumed  his  journey,  landed  in  Kent,  and  sent  some  of 
his  clerks  to  confer  with  Bertwald.  We  are  informed  that 
the  archbishop  was  overawed  by  the  Pope's  letter  to  him  *, 
which  is  not  extant ;  and  that  he  '  promised  to  mitigate  the 
harsh  decrees  formerly  passed  in  the  synod.'  Attended  by 
a  number  of  'his  abbots,'  Wilfrid  passed  by  London,  and 
entered  Mercia,  meaning  to  present  himself  to  King 
Ethelred.  But  Ethelred  was  king  no  longer.  He  was  Ethelred 
the  abbot  of  Bardney ;  he  had  resigned  his  crown  after  B^^^^ey 
reigning  twenty-nine  years  ^,  and  had  retired  to  the 
monastery  in  Lindsey  which  he  and  his  murdered  North- 

^  Bede  characteristically  adds,  '  They  sat  down  together  for  a  space,  ac 
de  supernis  judiciis  trepidi,  began  to  talk  a  little/  &c. 

^  Bede  reckons  these  *  four  years '  from  his  restoration. 

2  Eddi,  56.     Bede  omits  this. 

*  Eddi  says,  57,  'per  nuntios  scriptis  directis,'  as  if  the  pope's  letter 
had  been  entrusted  to  Bertwald's  envoys  ;  while  it  appears  from  Eddi, 
53.  55»  tli^t  i^  ^v^s  entrusted  to  Wilfrid.  But  from  c.  60  we  learn  that  the 
envoys  had  one  copy,  and  Wilfrid  brought  another. 

^  See  Chronicle,  a.  704  ;  Florence,  a.  716.  Ethelred  had  resigned  before 
June  13,  704 ;  Cod.  Bipl.  i.  60. 


456  Aldfrid  refuses  to  receive  him, 

CHAP.  xm.  umbrian  wife  had  'greatly  loved,  reverenced,  and  adorned^.' 
One  thinks  of  the  ex-king,  the  son  of  Penda,  gazing  at  the 
tomb  of  his  father's  sainted  victim,  where  the  banner  of 
gold  and  purple,  or  the  shreds  that  might  remain  of  it,  still 
bore  witness  to  Oswald's  majesty.  And  here,  under  the 
roof  of  this  royal  abbey,  Wilfrid  was  fain  to  meet  Ethelred. 
The  old  men  embraced,  and  wept  for  joy:  Ethelred,  on 
seeing  the  papal  letter, — a  duplicate,  of  course,  of  the  one 
addressed  to  Aldfrid  conjointly  with  himself, — looked  on 
its  ^buUs '  and  seals  very  differently  from  Egf rid  on  a  former 
occasion.  He  bowed  to  the  very  ground  after  hearing  the 
letter  read,  and  promised  that  he  would  do  his  best  to 
Kenred  procure  Compliance  with  its  directions.  He  kept  his  word 
^^f.  by  summoning  his  nephew  Kenred^,  who  had  succeeded 
him  on  his  abdication,  and  who  assured  him  that  he  also 
would  'obey  the  precepts  oi  the  Apostolic  see.'  During 
a  short  stay  in  the  Mercian  realm,  Wilfrid  probably  met 
Edgar,  then  bishop  of  Lindsey^  and  would  hear  that  in 
the  neighbouring  realm  of  East-Anglia  the  see  of  Elmham 
was  held  by  Nothbert  *,  and  that  of  Dfunwich  perhaps  by 
Aldbert^,  while  the  foundation  of  his  friend  Queen  Etheldred 
was  under  the  care  of  Ermenild,  the  widow  of  Wulf here,  or 
possibly  of  her  daughter  Werburga,  who  had  been  active 
during  her  uncle  Ethelred's  reign  in  founding  nunneries 
at   Trentham,   Hanbury,   and  Weedon^.      Before  leaving 

^  Bede,  iii.  11  :  *  Ut  monasterium  nobile,'  &c.  See  above,  p.  177,  on  the 
burial  of  St.  Oswald  there. 

^  He  was  son  of  Wulfhere,  and  brother  of  St.  Werburga,  He  confirmed 
a  grant  of  land  at  Twickenham  to  bishop  Waldhere  ;  Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl. 
i.  60.  Bede  tells  a  terrible  story  (v.  13,  told  him  by  bishop  Pecthelm) 
respecting  a  thane  in  Kenred's  service  whom  the  young  king  often 
admonished  to  amend  his  conduct,  but  who  always  answered  that  he  had 
time  enough  before  him.  He  died  in  despair,  and  Malmesbury  sees  in 
this  a  main  cause  of  Kenred's  resolution  to  go  to  Rome  and  turn  monk  ; 
G.  Reg.  i.  4. 

2  See  Bede,  iv.  12.  He  signs,  as  bishop,  a  charter  of  Ethelward,  *  sub- 
regulus '  of  the  Hwiccas,  in  favour  of  Egwin's  new  monastery,  in  706 ; 
Cod.  Dipl.  i.  65. 

*  Florence,  App.,  Mon.  H.  Brit.  p.  618.     He  signs  the  same  charter. 

^  He  was  bishop  when  Bede  wrote ;  v.  23  :  the  date  of  his  accession  is 
unknown.     Florence  calls  him  JEsculf. 

*  Cp.  Alb.  Butler,  Feb.  3.    See  above,  p.  207. 


Death  of  Aldfrid.  457 

Lindsey,  Wilfrid,  by  Ethelred's  advice,  sent  an  abbot  chap.  xm. 
named  Bad  win  and  a  '  teacher  ^ '  called  Alfrid  to  apprise 
the  Northumbrian  king  of  his  return,  and  to  ask  leave 
for  Wilfrid  to  come  to  him  with  the  Apostolic  letter  of 
greeting,  and  with  the  Apostolic  decisions  in  the  cause. 
Aldfrid  gave  them  a  courteous  reception,  and  appointed 
a  day  for  his  definite  answer.  But  when,  on  that  day,  they  Obstinacy 
again  appeared  before  him,  he,  by  advice  of  his  counsellors,  ^ 
spoke  thus :  '  Venerable  brothers  both,  ask  of  me  whatever 
you  want  for  yourselves,  and  I  will  give  it  you.  But, 
from  this  day  forth,  never  ask  of  me  anything  for  Wilfrid 
your  lord.  For  what  my  predecessors  ^  and  the  arch- 
bishop, with  their  advisers,  determined,  and  what  I  myself 
with  the  archbishop  ^  and  nearly  all  the  bishops  of  the 
nation  have  decided  upon,  this  I  am  resolved  never, 
while  I  live,  to  alter  for  any  alleged  writings  from  the 
Apostolic  see*.' 

It  was  afterwards  said  that  Aldfrid,  on  his  death-bed, 
regretted  his  treatment  of  Wilfrid,  and  exhorted  his  future 
successor  to  obey  the  Pope's  decree.  His  sister  Elfled  is 
cited  by  Eddi^  as  an  authority,  among  other  'eye-wit- 
nesses,' for  the  king's  'repentance/  and  for  this  speech, 
which  included  a  promise  on  his  own  part,  if  his  life 
should  be  spared.  Eddi  presumes  that  Aldfrid  '  the  Wise ' 
knew  his  illness  to  be  'a  stroke  of  the  Apostle's  power.' 
He  did  not  recover :  for  some  days  he  was  speechless,  and  Death  of 
on  the  14th  of  December,  705^,  he  died  at  Driffield,  'the 
field  of  Deira,'  an  ancient  town  in  the  East  Riding.  For 
eight  weeks  the  kingdom  was  in  the  hands  of  Eadwulf, 
who  is  ignored  by  the  Chronicle :  and  his  usurpation  was 
the  first  specimen  of  several  feeble  and  ignoble  kingships, 

^  Comp.  Bede,  iv.  5  :  '  Magistris  ecclesiae  pluribus.* 

^  So  Eddi,  58,  by  a  slip  for  '  predecessor.' 

^  Again,  as  in  Eddi,  53,  the  phrase,  '  ab  apostolica  sede  emisso,'  is 
applied  without  propriety  to  Bertwald. 

*  '  Propter  apostolicae  sedis,  ui  dicitis,  scripta.'  Hook's  mistranslation, 
*  from  the  apostolic  see,  as  you  call  itj'  i.  191,  is  a  serious  misrepresen- 
tation. 

*■'  Together  with  'Ethelburga,  abbess;'  Eddi,  59. 

^  Bede  and  the  Chronicle  give  the  year ;  the  Chronicle  gives  the  day 
and  place. 


458  Council  of  the  Nidd. 

CHAP.  XIII.  which  caused  men  to  look  upon  the  close  of  Aldfrid's 
nineteen  years  as  a  disastrous  epoch  for  Northumbrian. 
Wilfrid  had  ventured  to  return  to  Kipon  ^  before  he  sent 
messengers  to  Eadwulf,  who  repelled  them  with  an  'austere' 
reply,  swearing  by  his  salvation  that  unless  Wilfrid  left 
his  realm  within  six  days,  any  of  his  companions  found  in 

Osredking  it  should  be  put  to  death.     But  in  February,  a  successful 

umbria. "  conspiracy  overthrew  Eadwulf  and  enthroned  Osred,  son  of 
Aldfrid,  a  boy  of  eight,  in  the  first  year  of  whose  reign -^ 
another  Council  was  called  to  settle  the  '  cause  of  Wilfrid ' 
in  the  manner  suggested  by  Pope  John.  The  place  of  this 
assembly  was  somewhere  on  the  river  Nidd  ^  which  flows 
from  the  north-west  by  Knaresborough,  and  is  invested  with 
remarkable  associations  of  later  date. 

Council  of  This  Council  of  the  Nidd  was  not,  like  that  of  Easterfield, 
a  representation  of  all  the  English  Churches.  Bertwald  was 
the  only  Southern  prelate  present :  he  and  Wilfrid  arrived 
on  the  same  day.  The  boy-king  and  his  earls  appeared  with 
the  three  Northumbrian  bishops,  Bosa,  John,  and  Eadfrid, 
and  certain  abbots,  and  the  abbess  Elfled,  'ever  the  comforter 
and  best  counsellor  of  the  whole  province^.'  The  arch- 
bishop was  in  a  different  mood  from  that  in  which  he  had 
seconded  Aldf rid's  rigorous  line  of  conduct  towards  Wilfrid. 
He  rose,  and  at  once  took  the  line  of  a  peacemaker :  '  Let 
us  pray  to  our  Lord,  that  He  would  by  His  Holy  Spirit 

^  Bede,  Ep.  to  Egbert,  7.  Boniface,  Ep.  62,  tells  king  Ethelbald  of 
Mercia  tKat  the  privileges  of  Northumbrian  churches  remained  inviolate 
until  the  time  of  king  Osred. 

2  Eddi  says,  '•  cum  filio  suo  proprio  veniens  de  Hrypis  ; '  59.  On  this  it 
has  been  asked,  Was  Wilfrid  ever  married  ?  Kemble  supposes  that  he 
had  been ;  ii.  444.  But  this  would  be  inconsistent  with  Eddi's  account  of 
his  early  life,  and  with  his  own  affirmation,  Eddi,  21.  Raine  thinks  that 
the  relationship  was  a  spiritual  one,  Hist.  Ch.  York,  i.  89 ;  and  although 
the  word  'proprio'  is  remarkable,  as  followed  by  the  statement  that 
Osred  became  his  '  filius  adoptivus,'  it  may  be  used  to  indicate  a  *  sonship  ' 
more  sacred  and  intimate  than  would  be  constitu£ed  by  simple  '  adoption.* 
See  Eddi,  18,  for  the  story  of  the  boy  (Eodbald),  surnamed  'Bishop's  son.' 
Above,  p.  269. 

^  It  was  a  bad  reign  ;  see  Boniface,  Ep.  62.  He  was  a  profligate  youth, 
and  was  killed  in  battle,  when  only  nineteen,  Chron.  a.  716  ;  Hen.  Hunt, 
iv.  8  ;  cp.  Malm.  G.  R.  i.  53.     Bede  records  his  violent  death,  v.  22. 

*  Bede,  v.  19,  *  juxta  fluvium  Nidd.'     Eddi  adds,  'ab  oriente,'  60. 

'  *  Consolatrix  optimaque  consiliatrix.' 


Final  Compromise,  459 

infuse  into  our  hearts  the  spirit  of  concord.'  Then,  speaking  ckap.  xm. 
as  Theodore  would  never  have  condescended  to  speak,  in 
the  deferential  style  of  one  who  was  not  certain  of  his 
own  authority  in  Northumbria,  Bertwald  said  that  he  and 
Bishop  Wilfrid  had  certain  letters  directed  to  him  from  the 
Apostolic  see,  which  they  wished  the  Council  to  hear;  and 
the  document,  of  which,  it  appears,  there  were  two  copies, 
was  read  accordingly.  Bertfrid,  the  chief  ealdorman,  said 
to  the  archbishop,  '  We  should  like  to  hear  it  translated 
into  our  own  language.'  Bertwald  answered  by  remarking 
— a  true  remark  for  many  an  age— on  the  periphrastic 
lengthiness  of  the  Papal  style  ^  and  added  that  he  could 
give  the  sense  of  the  letter  in  few  words.  The  Apostolic 
see,  which  had  power  to  bind  and  to  loose,  had  ordered 
that  in  his  presence  the  bishops  of  Northumbria  should 
be  reconciled  to  Bishop  Wilfrid.  They  must  choose  one 
of  two  courses.  Either  let  them  makfe  peace  with  Wilfrid, 
and  restore,  as  the  Witan  should  decide  together  with  the 
archbishop,  'those  parts  of  the  churches  which  Wilfrid 
himself  once  ruled;'  or  else  let  all  the  parties  concerned 
meet  at  Rome,  to  have  the  affair  settled  by  a  greater 
Council.  To  refuse  both  these  courses  would  be  to  incur 
deposition :  a  layman  so  offending  would  incur  excommuni- 
cation *from  the  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ.'  The  three 
bishops,  who  evidently  deemed  their  chief  a  weak  deserter, 
boldly  asked,  'How  can  any  one  have  power  to  change 
what  our  predecessors,  and  Theodore,  and  King  Egfrid, 
ordained;  and  what  afterwards,  in  the  field  called  Easter- 
field,  we  and  nearly  all  the  bishops  of  Britain  decreed,  with 
King  Aldfrid,  and  in  your  presence,  O  Archbishop  ? '  The 
tide,  however,  had  turned  against  them.  Elfied  declared 
that  Aldfrid  had  in  his  last  days  expressed  his  intentions 
in  favour  of  Wilfrid  with  the  solemnity  of  a  vow  as  to 
himself,  of  an  injunction  as  to  his  heir;  and  Bertfrid, 
speaking  for  the  king  and  the  ealdormen,  announced  their 
mind  to  the  same  purpose.  He  told  what  had  lately 
happened:    when  besieged  in  Bamborough^  by  Eadwulf, 


^  '  Longo  circuitu  et  ambagibus  verborum  ; '  Eddi. 
2  '  Bebbanburg.'     See  above,  p.  28. 


460         End  of  the  '  Cause  of  Wilfrid.^ 

CHAP.  XIII.  and  shut  up  within  the  limits  of  a  rocky  fortress,  he  and 
his  fellow-earls  had  vowed  that  if  '  their  royal  boy '  should 
gain  his  father's  kingdom,  they  would  adhere  to  the  decisions 
of  Rome  about  Wilfrid ;  straightway  the  besiegers  had  come 
over  to  their  side,  and  sworn  friendship  towards  them, — 
the  gates  of  the  city  had  been  thrown  open,  they  had  been 
delivered  from  their  distress,  —  their  royal  boy  was  king. 
The  three  bishops  saw  that  it  was  a  time  for  peaceful 
settlement,  on  such  terms  as  could  be  accepted.  They 
Final  com-  conferred  with  Bertwald,  and  then  with  Elfled ;  and  the 
piomise.  j,gg^|^ — ^]^Q  gjj(j  Qf  ^j^Q  whole  weary  controversy — was 
another  compromise.  For  all  the  big  words  about  obedi- 
ence to  Papal  mandates,  the  mandates  of  Agatho,  of 
Benedict,  and  of  Sergius  were  not  obeyed:  the  liberty 
of  decision  conceded  by  John  VI  to  a  Northumbrian  synod 
was  used  in  such  a  manner  as  Wilfrid  himself  had  in  some 
sense  foreseen,  when  he  intimated  that  his  full  claim  might 
be  more  than  Northumbrian  authorities  would  grant.  Bede 
says  indeed,  in  one  place,  that  he  was  'received  again  to 
the  prelacy  of  his  own  church^';  but  in  another  he  explains 
that  this  church  was  Hexham,  and  that  when  Wilf rid '  after 
his  long  exile '  was  restored  to  this  bishopric  -,  John,  on  the 
death  of  Bosa  ^,  was  placed  in  the  see  of  York  ^.  So  that, 
in  fact,  the  second  compromise  was  less  favourable  than  the 
first :  Wilfrid,  in  686,  became  bishop  of  York,  though  with 
a  diminished  diocese ;  in  706  he  had  to  be  content  with  the 
see  of  Hexham  and  the  minster  of  Ripon,— clearly,  in  the 
first  instance,  with  Ripon  only,  until  Bosa's  death,  which 
soon  followed,  opened  the  way  for  an  arrangement.    Wilfrid 

^  Bede,  v.  19.  So  Eadmer,  who  wishes  to  make  it  appear  that  Wilfrid 
simply  triumphed,  51. 

^  Bede,  v.  3.     He  plainly  refers  to  the  second  exile. 
^         •■*  Bosa's  death,  as  we  have  seen,  was  erroneously  ante-dated  by  Florence. 
See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  171  ;  Stubbs,  Registr.  'Angl.  p.  4  ;  and  Smith's 
Bede,  p.  759,  '  Bosa  ante  annum  705  non  obiit.' 

*  It  was  as  bishop  of  York  that  John  visited  the  nunnery  of  *  Wetadun,' 
and  prayed  over  a  sick  nun,  Bede,  v.  3 ;  and  dedicated  a  church  on  the 
estate  of  an  earl  named  Puch,  two  miles  from  Beverley  (v.  4),  and  another 
church  founded  by  earl  Addi  in  the  neighbourhood  (v.  5) — indications  of 
the  growth  of  that  parochial  system  which  '  needed  no  foundation '  ; 
Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  a6o  :  see  above,  p.  196. 


End  of  the  ^  Cause  of  Wilfrid.*         461 

had  thus  to  abandon  his  claim  on  the  ancient  see  of  the  chap.  xm. 
royal  city,  the  mother-church  of  Northumbria ;  he  had  to 
acquiesce  in  the  translation  of  John  from  Hexham  to  York, 
and  to  take  possession  of  Hexham  as  John's  successor.  He 
recovered,  however,  all  his  domains  and  monasteries,  in 
Northumbria  and  in  Mercia.  The  arrangements  made  in 
the  Council  were  sealed  by  a  solemn  Eucharist,  at  which 
the  four  prelates  of  Northumbria  exchanged  the  kiss  of 
peace,  and  shared  in  the  Bread  of  unity.  And  so,  writes 
Eddi,  '  they  returned  to  their  own  homes  in  the  peace  of 
Christ ; '  and  the  once  fiery  and  imperial  spirit  of  Wilfrid, 
bent  and  chastened  by  age  and  troubles,  was  content  with 
the  prospect  of  quiet  and  peace  in  exchange  for  the  hope  of 
triumphant  ascendency.  But,  from  a  purely  Roman  point 
of  view,  the  settlement  was  somewhat  of  an  impotent 
conclusion :  an  ardent  supporter  of  Roman  claims  would  be 
disappointed  at  such  a  result  of  reiterated  Papal  decisions 
although  he  might  console  himself  by  the  reflection  that 
if  Wilfrid  had  not,  in  effect,  secured  all  that  he  had  once 
hoped  for,  his  protracted  cause  had  at  least  familiarized 
his  fellow- Churchmen  with  the  thought  of  appeals  to  the 
'Apostolic  see.'  His  pertinacity  had  not  led  to  any  imme- 
diate and  brilliant  success ;  but  it  had  formed  a  precedent 
which  might,  under  favourable  auspices,  be  productive  of 
greater  things  hereafter  \ 

^  On  the  'system  of  appeals  to  Eome,'  as  having  begun  with  Anselm, 
see  Dean  Church's  Life  of  St.  Anselm,  p.  223 ;  above,  p.  325. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

We  must  now,  once  more,  turn  back  from  the  continuous 
story  of  Wilfrid's  contests  and  troubles  to  the  quiet  develop- 
ment of  Church  life  and  work  in  the  southern  districts,  and 
particularly  among  the  West-Saxons.  We  have  seen  some- 
thing of  Aldhelm's  unrivalled  celebrity  and  influence ;  and 
the  interest  of  ecclesiastical  annals,  as  regards  the  ordinary 
progress  of  the  English  Church,  centres  at  this  point  in 
him.  Of  him  probably  Bertwald  thought,  when  he  urged 
on  the  Wessex  authorities  the  partition  of  their  great 
diocese, — a  step  which  Heddi  seems  to  have  regarded 
with  disfavour,  and  to  have  hindered  during  his  own 
lifetime.  The  difficulty  was  so  serious  that  in  704,  the 
year  of  Wilfrid's  sojourn  at  Rome,  a  provincial  Council  in 
its  yearly  meeting  threatened  to  suspend  communion  with 
Wessex,  if  there  were  further  delay  in  the  appointment  of 
another  bishop,  at  least,  for  that  kingdom^.  But  in  the 
following  year,  705  2,  we  find  a  number  of  English  bishops  ^ 
taking  part  in  a  synod  which  was  held,  apparently,  within 
the  bounds  of  Wessex,  and  which  resolved  to  remonstrate 
with  the  neighbouring  British  clergy  and  laity  on  their 
obnoxious  Easter-rule.     Who  so  fit  as  the  abbot  of  Malmes- 

'  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  267,  275 :  the  letter  of  bishop  Waldhere. 
This  throws  a  doubt  on  a  quotation  by  Rudborne  of  a  '  decree  of  Theodore,' 
to  the  effect  that  the  diocese  was  not  to  be  divided  in  Heddi's  lifetime ; 
Angl.  Sac.  i.  193  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  126. 

^  Faricius  says,  indeed,  in  706 ;  but  this  would  not  suit  the  notes  of 
time  for  the  episcopate  of  Aldhelm.  Probably  he  was  misled  by  a  record 
connecting  this  synod  with  the  first  year  of  the  Northumbrian  Osred, 
whose  right  to  his  father's  crown  would  in  some  sense  be  traced  to  the 
end  of  705.     See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  268. 

^  Aldhelm,  Ep.  i :  '  Ex  tota  paene  Britannia  innumerabilis  Dei  sacer- 
dotum  caterva  confluxit.'  It  was  not,  then,  as  Faricius  says,  a  mere 
West-Saxon  synod. 


Aldhelrns  letter  to  Geraint.  463 

bury,  the  foremost  scholar  in  all  the  English  Churches,  to  chap.  xrv. 
undertake  such  a  task  ?  To  him,  accordingly,  it  was  com-  Aidhelm's 
mitted  ^ ;  and  he  wrote,  at  once,  what  is  reckoned  as  the  QerSnt! 
first  of  his  letters  ^,  and  is  addressed,  in  highly  respectful 
terms,  to  *  the  most  glorious  lord,  swaying  the  sceptre  of 
the  Western  realm,  whom  the  writer  embraces  with 
brotherly  charity, — to  King  Geruntius,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  all  God's  priests  ^-  dwelling  in  Domnonia.'  This 
potentate  was  the  British  king  Geraint,  who  appears  in  the 
Chronicle  for  710  as  defeated  by  Ine :  his  realm  was  nearly 
the  whole  of  Dyfnaint*,  that  is,  of  Devonshire  and  Corn- 
wall, the  '  West  Wales '  of  English  speech,  which  still  main- 
tained its  Celtic  independence,  and  only  by  degrees  gave 
place  to  the  advance  of  the  Saxon.  Geraint,  indeed,  held 
part  of  Somersetshire,  until  Ine  built  Taunton  as  a  frontier- 
fortress  ^.  To  this  prince,  then,  Aldhelm  wrote,  in  effect  as 
follows.  '  I  am  commissioned  by  a  large  Council  of  bishops 
to  call  your  attention  to  four  points  which  are  faulty  in 
regard  to  the  clergy  of  your  nation.  First,  your  priests 
are  said  to  be  contentious :  they  do  not  live  in  harmony 
with  each  other.  They  ought  to  remember  the  sayings  of 
Scripture  in  praise  of  concord.  Secondly,  there  has  been 
a  rumour,  widely  spread,  to  the  effect  that  certain  priests 
and  clerics  in  your  province  obstinately  refuse  the  tonsure 
of  St.  Peter,  on  the  ground  of  adherence  to  the  tradition  of 
their  predecessors.  As  for  the  tonsure  which  they  use,  it 
is,  according  to  the  opinion  of  most  persons  ^,  traceable  to 
Simon,  the  inventor  of  art-magic ;  and  this  I  take  to  be  the 

^  '  Jubente  synodo,'  Bede,  v.  i8.  Aldhelm  refers,  in  De  Laud.  Vir- 
ginit.  2,  to  a  'pontificale  conciliabulum '  which  he  had  attended. 

^  See  it  in  Migne,  Patr,  Lat.  Ixxxix.  87  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  268. 

^  As  we  have  seen  (p.  245)  two  of  Chad's  consecrators  were  probably 
from  this  part  of  the  British  Church.     See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  150. 

*  Probably  *  the  deep  valleys/  e.  g.  of  Dartmoor.  Strictly,  Dyfnaint 
would  be  distinguished  from  Cernau,  or  Cornwall.  For  this  king  Geraint, 
and  for  an  earlier  who  has  left  his  name  at  '  St.  Gerrans,*  in  Cornwall, 
see  Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  ii.  664,  666.  Also  Rhys,  Celtic  Britain,  p.  109 ; 
Guest,  Orig.  Celt.  ii.  271.  Dumnonia  or  Damnonia  was  then  the  most 
important  of  *  British  '  kingdoms. 

^  Soon  after  his  victory,  Chron.  716.  Wessex  had  stretched  to  the 
Parret  since  the  victory  of  Kenwalch  at  '  Peonna '  (Pen)  in  658. 

•  *  Secundum  plurimorum  opinionem.'     See  above,  p.  93. 


464  Aldhelm's  letter  to  Geraint 

CHAP.  XIV.  case,  because  the  Clementine  books  testify  to  his  machina- 
tions, as  a  wizard,  against  St.  Peter.  We,  bearing  testi- 
mony, according  to  Scripture,  concerning  our  tonsure,  assert 
that  St.  Peter  appointed  it  for  several  reasons  ^ ; — but  we 
see  an  indication  of  it  in  the  ancient  Nazarites,  and  it  seems 
to  be  a  symbol  both  of  royalty  and  priesthood,  so  that  the 
heads  of  clerics  illustrate  St.  Peter's  own  saying,  "  Ye  are 
...  a  royal  priesthood  I"  But,  thirdly,  there  is  another  and 
a  more  cruel  mischief  to  souls,  in  that  your  priests  do  not 
follow  the  rule  of  the  Nicene  Council  as  to  Easter.  That 
rule  prescribed  the  use  of  a  cycle  of  nineteen  years  ^,  and 
made  the  fifteenth  moon  the  beginning  of  the  Paschal 
"calculation,"  and  the  twenty-first  moon  the  end  of  it' 
(i.e.  the  possible  Easter  Sundays  were  those  from  the 
fifteenth  to  the  twenty-first  moon  inclusive).  '  But  your 
priests,  following  the  canon  of  Anatolius  ^,  or  rather  that  of 
Sulpicius  Severus,  keep  Easter  with  the  Jews  on  the 
fourteenth  moon:  whereas  the  Roman  pontiffs  have  not 
sanctioned  either  canon,  nor  that  of  Victorius,  which  em- 
braces five  hundred  and  thirty-two  years.  For  there 
was  an  old  sect  of  heretics  called  Tessareskaidecaditae, 
who  were  excommunicated  for  keeping  the  fourteenth 
moon  with  the  Jews  as  the  time  for  the  Paschal  festival. 

^  Three  are  then  given  :  (i)  to  represent  the  crown  of  thorns;  (a")  to 
distinguish  the  old  from  the  new  priesthood  ;  (3)  *  that  Peter  and  his 
successors  might  bear  ridiculosum  gannaturae  hidibrium  in  populo 
Romano,  quia  et  eorum  barones  et  hostes  exercitu  superatos  sub  corona 
vendere  solebant.' 

2  It  would  almost  seem  as  if  Aldhelm  thought  that  i  Pet.  ii.  9  was 
addressed  to  the  clergy  as  such. 

"^  He  adds,  *  composed  of  an  ogdoad  and  a  hendecadas ; '  see  Bede,  De 
Temporibus,  c.  11 :  '  Cyclum  decennovenalem  propter  xiv.  lunas  paschales 
Nicaena  synodus  instituit,  eo  quod  ad  eundem  anni  Solaris  diem  unaquae- 
que  luna  per  xix.  annos  .  .  .  redeat  .  .  ;  '  '  Octo  enim  anni  lunares  totidem 
annos  solares  duobus  tantum  diebus  transcendunt,  quorum  alter  ad 
explementum  occurrit  hendecadis,'  &c.  ;  and  -his  verses  '  De  Ratione 
Temporum.*  On  the  nineteen  years'  cycle,  see  also  Ceolfrid  (in  effect, 
Bede)  in  Bede,  v.  21. 

*  See  Bede,  iii.  3,  '  aestimans,  &c.  .  .  .  Anatolii  scripta  secutam  ; '  and 
iii.  25,  where  Colman  argues  that  Anatolius  reckoned  from  'the  four- 
teenth,' and  Wilfrid  replies  that  he  framed  a  cycle  of  nineteen  years  which 
Colman  ignored,  and  that  he  regarded  the  fourteenth  evening  as  the 
beginning  of  the  fifteenth  moon.     See  above,  p.  228. 


on  British  Easter  and  Tonsure,         465 

Fourthly,  the  priests   of  the  Demetians^  (i.e.  the  people  chap.  xiv. 
of    our  present   South    Wales),    who    dwell    beyond   the 
Severn,  will   not   even    pray   with    a   Saxon    in   church, 
nor  eat  with  him  at  table.     On  the  contrary,  they  throw 
to   dogs   and   swine  the  remains  of  his  meal,  and  insist 
on  cleansing  with  sand  or  ashes  ^  the  dishes  or  bowls  from 
which  he  has  eaten  and  drunk.     They  refuse  us  the  kiss  of 
peace  ;  they  even  refuse  us  an  ordinary  greeting.     If  any 
of  our  people,  that   is,  of  Catholics,  go  to   dwell   among 
them  ^,  they  put  them  under  penance  for  forty  days.     This 
is  like  those  heretics  who  called  themselves  "  the  Pure  ^." 
Alas!  it  is  like  the  Pharisees  who  incurred  the  "woe"  for 
cleansing  the  outside  of  cup  and  platter,  and  for  indulging 
in  a  spirit  of   self-righteous   intolerance.     I  entreat   you, 
''  do  not  superciliously  and  doggedly  refuse  to  obey  the 
decrees  of  St.  Peter,  nor  in  tyrannous  pertinacity  spnrn  the 
tradition  of  the  Roman  Church  for  the  sake  of  the  statutes 
of  your  own  forefathers."     It  was  to  Peter  that  the  keys 
were  given  :  who  then  can  hope  to  enter  the  gate  of  para- 
dise, if  in  this  world  he  despises  the  statutes  of  Peter's 
Church  ?     But  perhaps  some  one,  proud  of  his  knowledge 
of  Scripture,  will  say,  "  I  sincerely  believe  both  Testaments, 
and  will  freely  proclaim  to  the  people  the  true  faith  as  to 
the  Trinity,  the  Incarnation,  the  Passion,  the  Resurrection." 
But  "  faith  without  works  is  dead  " ;  faith,  if  it  is  Catholic, 
is  inseparable  from  charity,  or  else  it  profits  nothing ;  good 
works  are  profitless  outside  the  Catholic  Church,  even  if 
they  include  strict  observance  of  coenobitic  discipline,  or 

^  Demetia  is  here  used  for  Deheubarth  or  South  Wales  ;  Palgrave, 
p.  457  ;  Pearson's  Hist.  Maps,  p.  22  ;  although  in  a  stricter  sense  it  meant 
the  south-western  part,  Pembrokeshire  and  the  parts  next  to  it,  otherwise 
called  Dyfed ;  see  Lappenberg,  i.  120  ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  144  ;  Jones 
and  Freeman's  Hist.  St.  David's,  p.  237.  Giraldus,  in  Descr.  Camb.  i.  a, 
calls  Demetia  a  portion  of  Deheubarth  containing  seven  '  cantrevs '  or 
hundreds. 

2  'Aut  harenosis  sabulorum  glareis,  aut  fulvis  favillarum  cineribus.' 
See  above,  p.  112. 

^  The  West-Saxons  who  gradually  settled  beyond  our  present  Somerset, 
amid  a  British  population,  called  themselves  Defnsaetas,  dwellers  iu 
Dyfnaint, — whence  '  men  of  Devon.' 

*  Novatians,  the  '  Cathari '  ;  Nicene  can.  8. 

Hh 


466  Aldhehns  letter  to  Geraint, 

CHAP.  XIV.  even  the  severest  asceticism  of  the  anchorite :  in  one  word, 
it  is  idle  to  boast  of  true  belief,  unless  one  follows  the  rule 
of  St.  Peter.' 

It  must  be  owned  that  this  letter  does  not  raise  our 
opinion  of  Aldhelm.  It  is  superior  to  many  of  his  remains 
in  point  of  style,  that  is,  it  is  comparatively  free  from  the 
extravagant  and  often  ludicrous  grandiloquence  ^  which, 
being  a  characteristic  of  one  so  greatly  admired  and 
honoured,  did  much  to  pervert  the  taste  of  those  who 
looked  to  him  as  a  model,  especially  of  the  charter- 
writers  of  the  ninth  century  2.  We  have  more  serious 
matter  in  this  letter  to  King  Geraint.  The  absurdity  of 
Aldhelm's  remarks  on  the  tonsure  is  disappointing;  but 
the  unfairness  of  describing  the  Britons  as  Quartodecimans 
without  indicating,  as  even  Eddi  does,  that  the  term  is 
being  used  in  a  lax  sense, — the  virtual  identification  of 
faith  like  St.  Peter's  with  conformity  to  all  the  decrees  or 
observances  of  Rome  ^,  the  conspicuous  lack  of  a  sense  of 
proportion  in  matters  ecclesiastical  or  religious, — these 
things  awaken  a  stronger  feeling  than  that  of  mere 
disappointment.  If  so  good  a  man  and  so  well-read 
a  student  could  sink  into  such  petty  narrowness,  what 
must  have  been  the  effect  of  Latin  rigorism  on  the  rank 
and  file  of  Latinized  clergy  ?  The  calm  assumption  that 
the  British  Church  was  not  Catholic  is  in  full  accord 
with  the  apparent  unconsciousness  of  any  provocations  of 
the  SSaxon'  side  which  had  stirred  the  resentful  Celtic 
nature  to  such  coarse  demonstrations  as  are  here  denounced, 
or  as,  in  the  Irish  bishop  Dagan's  case,  had  shocked  the  first 
successor  of  Augustine^.  The  intense  antipathy  of  the 
British  to  the  English  Church,  described  by  Bede   as   a 

*  See  above,  p.  296. 

"^  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  152,  404,  says  that  Boniface  showed  traces  of 
this  bad  habit,  but  that  it  hardly  reappears  afterwards  until  in  the  ninth 
century  it  was  'revived  in  all  its  extravagance  '  by  charter- writers. 

'  Aldhelm  undoubtedly  treats  Rome  as  the  centre  of  unity  and  the 
standard  of  doctrine  and  discipline.  He  puts  into  sonorous  form  the 
argument  with  which  Oswy  closed  the  Whitby  conference. 

*  Above,  p.  III.  Giraldus  says  that  the  Welsh  are  'ready  to  avenge 
not  only  new  and  fresh  injuries,  verum  etiam  veteres  et  antiquas  velui 
imtantes*  (Descr.  Camb.  i.  17). 


Gradual  surrender  of  Celtic  Easter,      467 

virtual  non-recognition  of  its  Christianity  ^,  was  of  course  chap.  xiv. 
connected  with  the  bitter  recollections  of  the  English 
conquest,  the  humiliating  experiences  of  English  ascendency. 
With  all  such  allowances,  it  was  doubtless  excessive  and 
unchristian-like;  it  must  have  been  fostered  by  the  con- 
tinuous neglect  or  refusal  of  all  responsibility  in  regard  to 
the  evangelization  of  the  '  Saxons '  while  yet  heathen ;  but 
we  have  Aldhelm's  word  for  the  existence,  among  these 
remoter  Welsh,  of  the  theological  learning  and  the  monastic 
self-devotion  which  had  distinguished  the  Church  of  Padarn 
and  Illtyd,  of  Dubricius  and  David.  The  effect  of  Aldhelm's 
exhortations  was  confined,  says  Bede,  to  those  Britons  who 
were  '  subject  to  the  West- Saxons  ^,'  that  is,  who  dwelt  in 
parts  of  Devon  and  Somerset  which  were  no  longer  British. 
No  inhabitants  of  Wales  adopted  the  'Catholic  Easter' 
until  755-777,  when  'their  Easter  was  altered'  first  in 
North  Wales,  then,  after  much  resistance,  in  South  Wales, 
by  the  counsel  'of  Elbod,  a  man  of  God,'  who  is  also 
described  as  'archbishop  of  Gwynedd^,'  and  after  whose 
death  the  contest  was  renewed ;  while,  so  far  as  '  West 
Wales'  was  concerned,  there  was  no  surrender  of  the 
national  '  Pasc '  until  after  the  foundation  of  the  Saxon 
bishopric  of  Crediton  in  the  early  part  of  the  tenth  cen- 
tury *,  although  a  Cornish  bishop,  some  fifty  years  before, 

^  Bede,  ii.  20.  See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  61  :  'In  their  estimation  the 
Saxons  were  .  .  .  the  children  of  robbers  .  .  .  possessing  the  fruit  of  their 
fathers'  crimes,  and  therefore  still  lying  under  the  maledictions  formerly- 
pronounced  by  the  British  bishops  against  the  invaders.' 

^  Bede,  v.  18.  Were  these  the  'nonnulla  pars  de  Brettonibus'  to  whom 
Bede  refers  in  v.  15  ?  The  reference  to  Adamnan  there  might  seem  to 
point  to  Britons  of  Strathclyde.  The  laws  of  Ine  treat  Britons  as  subjects, 
though  of  a  lower  class ;  s.  23,  24,  32,  46 :  see  Freeman,  i.  34,  and  Hist. 
Cath.  Ch.  of  Wells,  p.  18. 

^  See  Ann.  Camb.,  and  Brut,  in  Mon.  Hist.  Brit.  pp.  834,  843,  and 
another  form  in  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  204,  and  Ann.  Menev.  in  Angl. 
Sac.  ii.  648.  See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  62,  According  to  Rees,  Welsh 
Saints,  p.  66,  North  Wales  adopted  the  Catholic  Easter  soon  after  Elbod 
became  bishop  of  Bangor  in  755.  The  South  Welsh  resisted  until  777  : 
and  when  Elbod  died  in  809  they  returned  for  a  time  to  their  old  rule. 
For  Elbod  or  Elfod,  as  probably  bishop  of  Bangor,  and  as  not  proved  to 
be  a  metropolitan,  although  clearly  not  under  a  metropolitan,  see  Jones 
and  Freeman,  Hist.  St.  David's,  p.  258. 

*  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  i.  676.  See  Napier  and  Stevenson,  Early  Charters, 
p.  I  ff.,  for  the  probable  foundation  of  a  monastery  at  Crediton  in  739. 

t  H  h  a 


468      Gradual  surrender  of  Celtic  Easter. 

had  submitted  to  Canterbury.  However,  it  pleased  Malmes- 
bury  to  say,  '  The  Britons  even  to  this  day  owe  their  cor- 
rection to  Aldhelm^.'  The  Celtic  persistency  had  given 
way  in  more  than  one  quarter  when  Aid  helm  was  thus 
employed  against  its  south-western  strongholds.  The 
Northern  Irish  had  followed,  about  704,  the  example  set 
by  the  Southern  Irish  after  the  Council  of  the  White  Field 
in  634:  they  had  yielded  to  the  influence  of  Adamnan-, 
who  had  candidly  examined  the  subject,  and  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  Roman  system  was  correct,  but,  abbot 
of  Hy  as  he  was,  had  failed  to  carry  his  own  monks  along 
with  him,  and  even  in  North  Ireland  those  who  were 
specially  under  the  sway  of  Hy  stood  out  against  the 
arguments  of  its  head^.  But  after  several  years,  they 
were  '  brought  round '  by  his  influence  '  from  their  ancestral 
errors.'  The  Pictish  Church,  its  '  Columban '  monasteries 
excepted*,  was  persuaded  or  constrained  by  its  king 
Nechtan  or  Naiton  (himself  convinced  by  a  missionary 
named  Boniface)^  to  yield  to  the  representations  of  Abbot 
Ceolfrid  in  a  letter  which  Bede  himself  may  well  have 
penned  ^,  five  years  after  the  letter  of  Aldhelm  to  Geraint : 

^  Malmesb.  Gest.  Pontif.  v.  215.  He  adds,  'Although,  in  their  in- 
grained wickedness,  they  ignore  the  man  and  set  at  nought  the  book.' 

^  See  Bede,  v.  15  :  *  Navigavit  Hiberniam,'  &c      Above,  p.  112. 

^  Adamnan  was  in  Ireland  in  686  ;  on  his  return  to  Hy,  he  vainly 
endeavoured  to  establish  there  the  'Catholic'  Easter.  He  revisited 
Ireland  in  692,  and  again  in  697  ;  then  remained  there  seven  years,  and 
*  taught  nearly  all  of  those  who  were  free  from  the  dominion  of  the  monks 
of  Hy  to  observe  the  legitimate  time  of  Easter'  ;  Bede,  v.  15.  Whether 
the  English-born  St.  Gerald  of  Mayo  lived  thus  early,  and  was  his  host, 
is  uncertain.  He  had  the  satisfaction  of  celebrating  the  'true'  Easter 
of  704  in  Ireland,  returned  to  Hy,  and  died  on  Sept.  23,  704  ;  so  that,  as 
Bede  expresses  it,  he  was  spared  '  a  more  serious  contest,  at  the  return  of 
Easter,  with  those  who  would  not  follow  him  to  the  truth.'  See  Lanigan, 
iii.  150;  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  Ivi ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  no;  Skene, 
Celt.  Sc.  ii,  174. 

*  Nechtan  afterwards,  as  Reeves  says,  p.  184,  'drove  the  non-conforming 
Columbian'  {sic)  'monks  past  his  frontier'  (i.e.  monks  dependent  on 
Hy).     Cp.  Skene,  i.  284.  ^  Skene,  Celt.  Sc.  ii.  231. 

*  Bede,  v.  21.  The  letter  is  a  repository  of  the  Roman  topics  of  argu- 
ment as  to  '  Pasch  *  and  tonsure.  On  the  former  point,  Ceolfrid  lays  down 
three  principles  :  (i)  In  settling  Easter,  observe  the  first  month  ;  (2)  in 
it,  the  third  week  ;  (3)  in  that  week,  a  Sunday.  The  true  import  of  '  the 
fourteenth  day  at  even'  (Exod.  xii.  i8)  must  be  insisted  on,  so  that  the 


Daniel^  bishop  of  Winchester,  469 

and  even  the  stubbornness  of  St.  Columba's  own  monastery  chap.  xtv. 
was  for  the  most  part  broken  down  by  the  persuasions  of 
the   priest  Egbert,  six   years   later   yet,  in  716^.     But  a 
section  of  the  monks  set  up  a  new  abbot,  and  this  schism 
lasted  for  nearly  sixty  years. 

The  obstacle  to  the  partition  of  the  West-Saxon  diocese  was 
removed  in  705,  on  the  7th  of  July  ^,  or  more  probably  earlier, 
by  the  death  of  Heddi,  after  an  episcopate  of  nearly  thirty 
years.     Then,  at  last,  the  partition  took  place  ;  but  it  was  West- 
not  an  equal  one  ^,  for  Winchester  retained  only  Hampshire  ^^^^"^ 
and  Surre}'',  while  the  other  parts  of  Wessex — Wiltshire,  divided. 
Dorsetshire,    Berkshire,   and    part    if    not   the  whole    of 
Somerset— were  annexed  to  the  new  see,  which  was  estab- 
lished at  Sherborne.     For  Winchester  a  bishop  was  found 
who  is  best  known  to  us  through  his  correspondence  with 
the  great  St.  Boniface.     This  was  Daniel,  who  was  still  Daniel, 
living    when    Bede    wrote  ^ :    it   was    he    who    overcame  ^yinche^ 

ter. 
reckoning  may  not  begin  earlier  than  the  close  of  that  day.  If  that  even- 
ing is  a  Saturday,  let  it  be  Easter  Eve  ;  let  the  fifteenth  day  be  Easter 
Sunday.  Avoid  the  mistakes  either  of  taking  the  thirteenth  or  the  six- 
teenth evening  as  the  terminus  a  quo,  or  the  twentieth  or  the  twenty-second 
as  the  terminus  ad  quern  ;  in  other  words,  do  not  include  days  ignored  in  the 
Law  and  exclude  days  expressly  mentioned.  And  as  for  the  month,  let 
the  equinox  be  the  guide  ;  it  falls  on  March  2T  ;  a  full  moon,  then,  which  is 
earlier  than  that  day,  cannot  be  the  paschal  full  moon.  (Here  comes  a 
mystical  explanation  of  the  rule  of  keeping  Easter  after  the  equinox.) 
Ceolfrid  adds  an  account  of  the  nineteen  years'  cycle,  with  the  remark 
that  even  in  Britain  there  are  reckoners  who,  by  help  of  Alexandrian  rules, 
can  calculate  Easters  for  the  whole  period  of  532  years,  after  which  the 
solar  and  lunar,  the  monthly  and  weekly,  sequences  would  recommence. 
As  to  tonsure,  it  is  admitted  that  there  has  been  no  uniformity,  and  that 
variety  of  usage  does  no  harm  where  faith  and  charity  are  present  ;  but 
among  all  modes  surely  that  is  the  best  which  is  traceable  to  St.  Peter, 
and  reminds  us  of  the  crown  of  thorns,  and  of  the  duty  of  suffering 
reproaches  for  Christ's  sake.     Then  comes  a  criticism  on  the  Celtic  tonsure. 

^  Bede,  v.  22.     Haddan  and  Stubbs,  ii.  114.     Skene,  ii.  177,  278. 

'^  See  Alb.  Butler.  But  this  day  is  too  late,  if  Aldhelm  died  in  the  fifth 
year  of  his  episcopate  ;  Malmesb.  v.  231.  It  is  probable  that  after  the 
threat  of  suspension  of  communion  at  a  synod  of  704,  there  was  an  agree- 
ment that  the  division  should  take  ^lace  as  soon  as  the  now  aged  bishop 
had  passed  away. 

^  See  Malmesb.  Gest.  Pontif.  v.  223.  The  Chronicle  says  that  Aldhelm 
'  was  bishop  on  the  west  of  Selwood.* 

*  Bede,  v.  18.  He  supplied  Bede  with  some  documents,  and  survived 
him  ten  years,  having  resigned  his  see  in  744. 


470  Dantelj  bishop  of  Winchester, 

CHAP.  XIV.  the  repugnance  of  the  Isle  of  Wight  to  West-Saxon 
dominion  sufficiently  for  the  regular  annexation  of  its 
church  to  his  bishopric,  and  who  promoted  the  revival  of 
the  South-Saxon  bishopric  of  Selsey^.  He  gave  most 
opportune  encouragement  to  the  mission -schemes  of 
Winfrid,  afterwards  known  as  Boniface,  who  at  the  time 
of  his  consecration  for  Winchester  was  living  as  a  young 
monk  of  twenty-five  in  a  Hampshire  monastery  called 
Nutscelle  ^,  where  under  the  abbot  Winbert  he  studied  the 
'  tripartite '  sense  ^  of  Scripture,  together  with  grammar 
and  metres,  and,  while  he  attended  diligently  to  his  portion 
of  manual  labour  and  to  all  the  details  of  Benedictine 
observance,  was  making  himself  eminent  as  a  teacher, 
kindling  enthusiasm  for  sacred  knowledge  in  the  minds  of 
his  auditors,  every  day  learning  by  heart  something  from 
the  Scriptures,  or  from  the  '  acts '  of  those  martyrs  whom 
he  was  one  day  gloriously  to  join,  and  was  uniformly 
cordial  and  helpful  to  all  who  came  under  his  influence, 
Boniface  whether  poor  or  rich,  whether  thrall  or  free  *.  Daniel  dis- 
land  ^^^^'  cerned  in  him  a  '  vessel  for  honour,'  and  gave  him,  on  his 
second  journey  into  Frisia,  a  letter  of  commendation  to  any 
kings,  dukes,  bishops,  abbots,  presbyters,  and  'spiritual 
sons,'  asking  them  to  show  hospitality,  after  the  manner 
of  the  patriarchs,  to  the  religious  presbyter  Winfrid  ^. 
A  letter  written  long  afterwards  by  Boniface  to  Daniel 
informs  us  that  the  latter  in  old  age  became  blind  ^ ;  and 
two  letters  from  Daniel  "^  give  us  an  insight  into  his  mind 
and  character,  showing  how  he  could  advise  and  comfort. 
He  urged  Boniface  not  to  be  disheartened  by  his  difficulties, 
not  to  attempt  an  impracticable  separation  of  all  the  bad 

^  Bede,  iv.  i6  ;  v.  i8.     Stephens,  Memor.  of  See  of  Chich.  p.  22. 

2  Willibald,  Vit.  S.  Bonifac.  c.  2.  See  abovp,  p.  354,  and  Maclear, 
Apostles  of  Med.  Eur.  p.  1 10,  Winbert  '  left  behind  him '  a  MS.  of  the 
Prophets  in  'clear  and  distinct  letters*  ;  Bonif.  Ep.  12. 

^  The  threefold  spiritual  sense,  moral,  allegorical,  and  '  anagogical.* 

*  Willibald,  c.  3. 

5  Bonif.  Ep.  I.     This  was  in  718. 

^  Bonif,  Ep.  12.    He  retired  to  Malmesbury  (his  old  home  ?)  in  744. 

■^  Bonif.  Ep.  13,  14.  Of  these  letters,  Ep.  13  was  written  several  years 
after  Ep.  14,  i.  e.  when  Boniface  was  archbishop. 


'     Daniel^  bishop  of  Winchester.  471 

from  all  the  good,  a  complete  avoidance  of  all  contact  with  chap.  xiv. 
false  teachers ;  but  here  he  carries  his  principle  to  tolera- 
tion to  the  point  of  sanctioning,  or  imagining  Scripture  to 
sanction,  a  temporary  simulation^.  More  interesting, — 
indeed,  specially  interesting,— is  the  other  letter,  in  which 
Daniel  suggests  topics  for  missionary  argument  against 
polytheism,  intended  to  draw  the  polytheist  by  a  Socratic 
process  into  difficulties  ^  and  at  the  same  time  insists  that 
these  points  are  to  be  advanced  with  all  gentleness,  and  to 
be  followed  up  by  indirect  contrasts  between  Christianity 
and  Pagan  '  superstition.'  But,  it  must  be  owned,  Daniel 
again  provokes  criticism  by  recommending  Boniface  not 
only  to  insist  on  the  argument,  as  we  now  call  it,  from 
Christ endo'm^ — from  the  world-wide  spread  of  the  Gospel, — 
but  to  point  out  that  Christians  enjoy  the  temporal  blessing 
of  '  lands  fruitful  in  corn,  wine,  and  oil,'  while  Heathenism 
is  confined  to  climates  of  '  perpetual  winter  ^' — a  perilous 
exaggeration  of  '  the  promise  of  the  life  that  now  is.' 

This  was  the  prelate,  then,  who  in  the  autumn  of  705 
succeeded  Heddi  at  Winchester.  For  Sherborne  there  could  Aldhelm, 
be  but  one  choice ;  all  orders,  including  a  multitude  of  the  s^erborne. 
people  ^,  turned  at  once  to  Aldhelm,  '  who  was  specially 
recommended  by  the  very  fact  that  he  showed  reluctance 
to  accept  the  promotion  ^.'  He  was,  of  course,  present  at 
the  Witenagemot ;  we  picture  him  according  to  a  pupil's 
description,  as  a  tall  man  with  white  hair  and  sparkling 

^  Following  Jerome,  and  thereby  forsaking  St.  Augustine,  he  treats 
St.  Peter's  conduct  in  Gal.  ii.  12  as  right,  and  compares  it  to  the  conduct 
of  St.  Paul  in  Acts  xxi.  26,  &c.  He  seems  not  to  see  the  difference 
between  any  kind  of  'simulation,*  or  even  of  pretending  (fingendi),  and 
such  an  '  economy '  as  is  free  of  insincerity. 

^  E.  g.  '  Since  the  gods  had  a  beginning,  what  of  the  world  ?  If  it  had 
a  beginning,  who  made  it  ?  Not  the  gods,  who  were  confessedly  not 
eternal.  If  it  was  eternal,  who  ruled  it  before  the  gods  ?  How  was  the 
first  god  produced  ?  Will  any  more  come  into  being  ?  How  do  they 
know  what  god  is  the  mightiest  ?  Valde  cavendum  est  ne  in  potiorem 
quis  offendat.  Do  they  expect  temporal  or  eternal  happiness  ?  Do  the 
gods  need  their  sacrifices  ?  '  &c. 

^  '  Frigore  semper  rigentes  terras.'     Cp.  above,  p.  139. 

*  Faricius,  c.  3.  *  Omnis  aetatis  et  ordinis  conflatur  sententia  ; ' 
Malmesb.  G.  P.  v.  223.    The  '  people '  or  laity  were  active  in  this  election. 

^  Faricius,  c.  3.    Cp.  Bingham,  b.  iv.  c.  7.  s.  i. 


472  Aldhelniy  bishop  of  Sherborne, 

CHAP.  XIV.  eyes  ^.  He  endeavoured  to  decline  the  great  office.  '  I  am 
too  old,  I  need  rest.'  Instantly,  and  by  acclamation,  came 
the  reply :  *  The  older,  the  wiser  and  the  fitter  ^ ! '  He  still 
held  out  as  long  as  he  could  without  unseemliness ;  but  '  as 
he  had  not  been  drawn  on  by  ambition,  so  neither  did  he 
draw  back  in  disobedience :  in  each  respect  he  observed  the 
mean  ^/  He  yielded,  and  was  conducted  to  Canterbury  for 
consecration.  With  what  recollections  must  he  have  trod 
the  precinct  of  Christ  Church,  and  visited  his  old  master 
Hadrian,  still  living  and  officiating  as  abbot  in  St.  Peter's  ! 
After  his  consecration,  the  archbishop  detained  him  for 
some  time  in  order  to  get  the  benefit  of  his  counsels*.  When 
he  took  possession  of  his  new  bishopric,  he  built  a  church 
at  Sherborne,  which  Malmesbury  tells  us  that  he  himself 
had  seen  ^.  The  little  town,  he  says  elsewhere,  was  '  not  an 
agreeable  place ;  it  had  neither  a  good  situation  nor  a  large 
population;  it  was  surprising,  it  was  almost  disgraceful, 
that  it  should  have  retained  an  episcopal  see  for  so  many 
ages  ^,' — in  fact,  through  twenty-seven  episcopates,  of  which 
the  most  noteworthy  was  that  of  Asser,  the  Welsh  coun- 
sellor and  biographer  of  Alfred,  and  the  last  was  Herman's, 
who  after  uniting  Sherborne  to  the  younger  bishopric  of 
Ramsbury  '^,  removed  his  see  to  Old  Sarum,  in  obedience  to 
the  Council  of  1075.  Aldhelm  wished  to  resign  the  head- 
ship of  Malmesbury  and  its  dependent  monasteries;  but 
his  monks  could  not  brook  such  a  loss  ^.     They  rejected  the 

^  See  Ethelwald's  '  cai-men '  in  Migne,  Ixxxix,  308. 

^  Malmesbury,  v.  223.  ^  '  Servavit  modum,'  Faricius. 

*  Malmesbury  ;  who  brings  in  here  a  story  of  Aldhelm's  visiting  Dover, 
and  finding  some  sailors  at  work  in  landing  a  store  of  books.  Attracted 
by  one,  which  includes  both  Testaments,  he  turns  over  the  leaves  and 
begins  to  bargain  for  it  :  they  abuse  him  for  trying  to  beat  down  the 
price  of  their  property.  He  only  smiles  ;  they  row  off,  are  caught  in 
a  storm,  and  cry  out  to  him  for  pardon  ;  he  signs  the  cross  and  rows  to 
their  vessel  ;  they  make  the  shore  safely,  and  offer  to  give  him  the  book  : 
he  insists  on  paying  for  it, — and  it  is  preserved  at  Malmesbury  as  a  speci- 
men of  antiquity ;  v.  224.  Faricius  tells  this  tale  rather  differently,  and 
dates  it  earlier. 

*  *  Ecclesiam  quam  ego  quoque  vidi  mirifice  construxit.' 

^  Malmesb.  G.  P.  ii.  79.     Cp.  Stubbs,  Registr.  Sacr.  Anglic,  p.  165. 
'  Founded  for  Wiltshire,  to  relieve  Sherborne,  in  909. 

*  Faricius,  c.  3 ;  Malmesbury,  G.  P.  v.  225. 


Church  zvork  in  IVessex,  473 

notion  of  having  any  other  '  president  ^ '  in  his  lifetime,  chap.  xiv. 
His  object  had  been  to 'secure  desirable  appointments;  and  Churcii 
when  he  yielded  to  his  monks'  affectionate  resistance,  he  ^JgJx 
took  care  to  guard  their  right  of  free  election  by  a  docu- 
ment which  is  said  to  have  been  duly  signed  and  attested 
at  Wimborne  in  the  presence  of  Ine  and  Daniel,  and 
afterwards  confirmed  by  a  Council  on  the  Nodder.  But 
this  deed  is  at  least  of  doubtful  authenticity  ^.  That  he 
possessed  a  great  influence,  in  things  ecclesiastical,  over  Ine, 
may  be  taken  for  granted.  It  was  probably  through  his 
influence  that  the  foundation  of  the  monastery  of  Abingdon, 
long  interrupted  by  the  delays  and  inconsistencies  of  Hean, 
was  finally  accomplished^,  by  the  renewed  co-operation 
between  him  and  his  sovereign.  And  although  the  docu- 
ment which  represents  Ine  as  granting  endowments  to 
abbot  Hemgils  and  his  monks,  in  '  the  old  city  which  is 
called  Glastingea,'  and  which  professes  to  have  been  exe- 
cuted in  the  ancient  '  wooden  church '  of  that  sacred  isle, 
has  been  condemned  as  spurious, — being  dated  in  704,  yet 
referring  to  the  counsel  of  Aldhelm  as  bishop^, —  and 
although  the  Glastonbury  tradition  cannot  convince  us  that 
Ine  gave  splendid  gifts  to  that  church,  such  as  a  chapel 
enriched  with  gold  and  silver^,  yet  we  may  believe  that 
he  bestowed  upon  it  some  gifts  which  were  afterwards 
exaggerated,  and  raised  to  the  east  of  it  a  new  minster,  the 
predecessor  of  the  mighty  abbey  church  ^.     Whether  he  did 

*  'Patronum.' 

^  Kemble  rejects  it,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  6i.  See  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  276. 
Another  'charter  of  Ine,'  exemptingWest-Stixon  monasteries  from  taxation, 
is  dated  in  704,  and  therefore  is  inconsistent  with  the  date  of  Aldhelm's 
episcopate,  while  it  refers  to  him  as  a  prelate  ;  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  57. 

^  See  Stevenson,  Chron.  Abingd.  ii.  p.  xiii.  He  adds,  'Aldhelm  must 
have  been  conscious  that,  in  promoting  this  object,  he  was  promoting  the 
interests  of  civilization  as  well  as  those  of  Christianity,'  &c.  Above, 
p.  298. 

*  See  this  Parvum  Privilegium  Kegis  Inae  in  Malmesb.  de  Antiq.  Glast. 
Eccl.  (XV  Script,  p.  309)  and  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  58.  The  Magnum  Privilegium, 
which  is  clearly  spurious,  is  in  Malmesb.  (Gest.  Reg.  i.  s.  36)  and  Cod, 
Dipl.  i.  85  :  it  is  dated  in  725.  A  grant  of  lands  at  Brent  (Cod.  Dipl.  i.  83) 
is  at  least  very  questionable  (Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  307). 

■^  XV  Script,  p.  310. 

*  Freeman,  Engl.  Towns  and  Districts,  p.  98. 


474  Death  of  Aldhelm, 

CHAP.  XIV.  anything  in  the  way  of  founding  a  church  at  Wells  must 
be,  at  least,  extremely  uncertain :  thatt  he  planted  a  bishopric 
at  Congresbury,  afterwards  removed  to  Wells,  is  a  story 
without  real  groundwork  ^. 

Activity  of  Aldhelm's  ascetic  habits  had  probably  made  him  prema- 
^  ™'  turely  old.  But  he  abated  none  of  them,  while  he  discharged 
his  new  duties  indefatigably,  visiting  every  part  of  his 
diocese,  and  preaching  by  night  as  well  as  by  day  ^.  This 
labour  wore  him  out  in  four  years  :  the  spring  of  709  was 
the  last  of  his  life.     He  was  at  Dulting  in  Somerset,  when 

His  death,  his  last  liour  drew  nigh.  He  assembled  a  number  of  clergy, 
monks,  and  laics,  enforced  on  them  the  observance  of  the 
bond  of  charity,  and  after  commending  his  flock  to  the 
Divine  care,  desired  to  be  carried  into  the  little  wooden 
church  ^  of  the  village,  and  there,  seated  on  a  stone,  breathed 
his  last,  on  the  25th  of  May,  709  *.  He  was  buried,  by  his 
own  desire,  in  St.  Michael's  church  at  Malmesbury^,  and 
succeeded  by  Forthere,  a  man  of  much  theological  learning, 
who  was  still  living  when  Bede  wrote  ^. 

We  draw  towards  the  end:  this  year  is  the  last  of  the 
great  period  which  we  are  reviewing.  Wilfrid  had  passed 
some  quiet  years — between  three  and  four — in  the  bishopric 
of  Hexham,  with  leisure  for  looking  back,  as  from  a  well- 
loved  home  and  refuge,  on  the  storms  and  the  splendours  of 
the  past.     It  was  during  this  interval,  in  707 ',  that  some 

^  See  Freeman,  Hist.  Cath.  Ch.  Wells,  p.  13. 

^  Malmesb,  G.  P.  v.  227  :  he  uses  '  dioeceses  '  for  parts  of  the  diocese. 

'  Afterwards  rebuilt  of  stone  by  a  monk  of  Glastonbury.  Comp.  pp.  54-5. 

*  See  Faricius,  c.  3  ;  Malmesb.  v.  228. 

^  The  distance  was  fifty  miles  :  a  great  crowd  attended  the  corpse,  each 
thinking  himself  '■  beatiorem  qui  propior  esset,'  and  glad  to  see,  if  not  to 
touch,  the  bier  on  which  the  form  and  face,  undefaced  by  decay,  were 
visible.  Stone  crosses  were  afterwards  set  up  at  every  seven  miles  of 
the  road,  which  long  stood  uninjured,  and  wer^  called  '  Bishopstones  *  ; 
Malmesb.  v.  230.  He  tells  us  that  bishop  Eg  win  came  to  Dulting  to 
conduct  the  funeral. 

^  Bede,  v.  18  :  *  Quo  defuncto,'  &c.   See  a  grant  of  his  in  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  73. 

'  Bede,  Ep.  3,  to  Plegwin ;  cp.  Giles's  Bede,  i.  p.  cxxxv,  for  this  date. 
In  the  letter  Bede  refers  to  his  Opusculum  de  Temporibus,  as  published 
five  years  before.  This  tract  ends  in  the  fifth  year  of  Tiberius  III 
(Apsimar),  i.  e.  702-3  (if  his  accession  was  in  698,  L'Art  de  Verifier,  &c, 
iv.  284,  not  697,  as  others).     Hence  we  infer  that  the  Wilfrid  referred  to 


Complaint  against  Bede.  475 

monks  of  the  countryside  ^,  in  his  presence  and  over  their  chap.  xiv. 
cups,  spoke  of  Bede  as  '  a  heretic'  Plegwin,  one  of  the  Complaint 
monks  of  Hexham,  hearing  this,  sent  a  messenger  to  inform  ^^^^ 
Bede,  who  at  first  'turned  pale  with  horror/  then,  on 
inquiring,  found  that  the  reason  was  '  that  he  had  denied 
that  the  Saviour  had  come  in  the  sixth  age  of  the  world.' 
On  reflection,  he  concluded  ^  that  this  was  a  misapprehen- 
sion of  what  he  had  said,  five  years  before,  in  his  tract 
'  On  Times,'  wherein  he  had  preferred  the  shorter  or  Hebrew 
chronology  of  Genesis,  according  to  which  Christ  must  have 
come  when  five  thousand  years  were  not  completed  ^.  He 
desired  Plegwin  to  cause  this  letter  to  be  read  '^  before  their 
'most  reverend  father  and  lord  Wilfrid,  that  as  he  was 
present  when  I  was  senselessly  assailed,  he  may  hear,  and 
judge  for  himself,  how  little  I  deserved  it.'  The  incident  is 
curious,  as  a  proof  of  the  extent  of  interest  in  questions  of 
Scriptural  chronology  which  was  felt  at  this  time  even  by 
the  '  rustic '  monks  of  the  North.  Often,  no  doubt,  with 
Acca  by  his  side,  the  bishop  would  '  walk  about '  the  pre- 
cinct of  that  basilica  which  Eddi  has  called  superior  to  all 
churches  north  of  Wilfrid's  beloved  Italy.  Once,  when 
going  out  of  Hexham  on  some  occasion,  he  was  struck  with 
an  illness  of  the  same  kind  as  that  which  had  prostrated 
him  on  his  approach  to  Meaux.  The  tidings  brought 
a  number  of  his  abbots,  and  of  the  hermits  dependent  on 
his  monasteries,  to  pray  with  his  monks  as  he  lay  uncon- 
scious ;  the  aim  of  their  prayers  being  that  he  might  at 
least  have  a  return  of  consciousness,  which  would  enable 
him  to  dispose  of  his  monasteries  and  his  property  "\     He 

in  the  letter  was  'St.  Wilfrid,'  not  Wilfrid  II  (bishop  of  York,  718-732), 

as  Smith  (App.  to  Bede,  p.  802)  and  Raine  (i.  93)  assert. 

^  '  Rusticis.'     See  his  Life  of  St.  Felix,  c.  8  :  '  Rusticus,  non  rustice,  sed 

docte  ac  fideliter  agens.' 

2  *  Cogitare  sedulus  coepi,  unde  haec  in  me  calumnia  devolveretur/ 

^  Nor,  indeed,  four  thousand  ;  De  Tempor.  22,   Bede  solemnly  professes 

his  belief  that  Christ  came  in  the  sixth  age,  but  says  that  an  age  has  not 

a  fixed  number  of  years.     He  cites  Jerome  in  behalf  of  the  Hebrew  text  ; 

Ep.3. 

*  By  a  certain  David,  who  on  the  occasion  referred  to,  when  some  other 
'brother'  vilified  Bede,  spoke  in  his  favour,  but  could  not  explain  what 
he  had  meant. 

^  Eddi,  61  :  '  Ne  nos  quasi  orbatos  sine  abbatibus  relinqueret.' 


476  Wilfrid's  last  arrangements. 

r;HAP.  XIV.  did  recover,  not  only  consciousness,  but  a  measure  of  health, 
and  lived  a  year  and  a  half  longer, — the  illness  having 
happened,  it  would  appear,  in  the  spring  of  708.  In  the 
Wilfrid's  following  year,  when  at  Ripon,  he  caused  his  *  hoard '  to  be 
rano'e-"  opened  in  the  presence  of  two  abbots  and  six  monks  of 
ments.  proved  fidelity  ^.  They  gazed  on  the  shining  store  of  gold 
and  silver  and  jewels :  he  bade  his  treasurer  divide  it  into 
four  parts.  Then  said  the  bishop,  '  Dearest  brothers,  you 
know  that  I  have  long  thought  of  making  yet  another 
visit  to  the  see  of  St.  Peter,  where  I  have  so  often  been 
delivered  from  troubles,  and  there,  if  God  so  willed,  to  end 
my  life.  I  meant  to  offer  gifts,  from  the  best  part  of  this 
treasure,  at  the  churches  of  St.  Mary  and  St.  Paul  at  Rome  2. 
But  should  God  provide  for  me  otherwise, — as  often  hap- 
pens to  old  men, — and  my  last  day  should  come  sooner, 
then  I  charge  you  to  send  my  gifts  to  those  churches.  Of 
the  three  other  parts,  give  one  to  the  poor  of  my  flock, 
'  for  the  redemption  of  my  soul  ^  ; '  let  the  abbots  of  Hex- 
ham and  Ripon  share  another  between  them,  so  that  they 
may  purchase  the  favour  of  kings  and  bishops  *.  But  as 
to  the  last  part,' — one  may  imagine  the  old  man's  eyes 
bedimmed  as  he  proceeded, — '  distribute  it,  according  to 
each  man's  proportion,  among  those  who  have  suffered  long 
exiles  with  me,  and  to  whom  I  have  given  no  lands ;  let  it 
go  to  maintaining  them  when  I  am  gone.'  The  tender  and 
noble  heart,  unchilled  by  age,  felt  warmly  for  the  possible 
needs  of  adherents  so  loyal  and  loving  as  those  who  had 

^  Eddi,  62.     See  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  270. 

2  That  is,  the  Liberian  basilica  of  '  St.  Mary  Major,'  rebuilt  about  43a 
by  Sixtus  III,  and  the  glorious  church  of  St.  Paul-without-the-walls, 
erected  in  386,  and  now  rebuilt  in  its  old  form  after  the  fire  of  1823.  The 
mosaics  of  the  great  arch  at  the  end  of  its  vast  nave  are  those  which 
Wilfrid  must  often  have  admired,  having  been  set  there  in  440. 

'  A  common  phrase  in  ancient  charters  ;  see^Kemble,  Cod.  Dipl.  i.  73, 
82,  90,  108.  Bede,  in  his  preface  to  his  Life  of  Cuthbert,  asks  that 
prayers  may  be  made  for  him  at  Lindisfarne  after  his  death,  'for  the 
redemption  of  his  soul.'  '  Redemption,'  in  such  phrases,  was  not  used  in 
its  strict  sense ;  the  phrase  is  equivalent  to  *  pro  remedio  animae ' ;  Cod. 
Dip!,  i.  I,  16,  26,  41,  55,  &c.,  *  remedium '  =  relief  from  penalty.  See 
above,  p.  187. 

*  Contrast  Aidan  in  Bede,  iii.  5  :  *  Nullam  potentibus  saeculi  pecuniam 
.  .  ,  unquam  dare  solebat.'     But  'old  times  were  changed.'   Above,  p.  234. 


Wilfrid* s  journey  into  Mercia,  477 

stood  by  him  through  all  troubles :  he  could  not  bear  to  chap.  xiv. 
think  that  they  should  want  when  they  had  no  longer  the 
comfort  of  his  presence  and  protection.  Soon  afterwards 
he  announced  that  he  had  appointed  one  of  these  true  com- 
panions, his  own  kinsman  Tatbert,  to  preside  over  the 
minster  of  Ripon  after  his  death.  This  was  spoken  to  his 
confidants :  he  then  ordered  the  bell  ^  to  be  rung,  and  '  the 
whole  family  ^  of  Ripon '  obeyed  its  summons.  He  entered 
the  chapter-house,  sat  down,  and  said :  '  Our  brother  Celin, 
sometime  prior,  wishes  to  adopt  the  hermit-life  ;  and  I  will 
not  detain  him.  Do  you  all  keep  to  your  rule,  until,  if 
God  wills,  I  return  to  you.  But  these  two  abbots  of  ours, 
Tibba  and  Ebba,  have  come  hither  from  the  Mercian  king 
Ceolred,  with  an  invitation  for  me  to  speak  to  him  on  the 
affairs  of  our  houses  in  Mercia,  and  have  persuaded  me  to 
go.  When  I  return,  I  will  bring  with  me  the  person  fittest 
for  the  presidency  of  this  house ;  but  if  anything  else  should 
happen  to  me  through  my  infirmities,  then  I  bid  you  all  to 
accept  as  abbot  whomsoever  these  who  sit  by  me,  Tibba 
and  Ebba,  Tatbert,  Hadufrid,  and  Aluhfrid,  shall  present 
to  you,' — meaning,  of  course,  that  Tatbert  himself  should  be 
so  presented.  All  the  monks  bowed  to  the  ground,  pro- 
mised obedience,  received  his  benison,  '  and,  as  a  body,  saw 
his  face  no  more.'  He  proceeded  into  Mercia :  King  Ken-  Wilfrid  in 
red  had,  in  the  spring  of  that  same  year,  imitated,  in  part,  ^^^^^^* 
the  example  of  Cadwalla  by  resigning  his  crown  and  going 
to  Rome,  accompanied  by  OfFa,  the  young,  handsome,  and 


'  Comp.  Adamn.  Vit.  Col.  i.  8,  '  Cloccam  pulsa  ; '  and  iii  23,  'media 
nocte  pulsata  personante  clocca.'  See  too  Miss  Stokes,  Early  Chr.  Art 
in  Ireland,  p.  58  ff.  In  Vit.  Anskar.  32  we  hear  of  a  concession,  '  quod  antea 
nefandum  paganis  videbatur,' that  a  church  might  have  a  'clocca.'  So 
Vit.  Sturm.  24:  Sturmi,  dying,  orders  'omnes  gloggas  pariter  moveri.' 
Eddi  calls  it  'signum.' 

^  Eddi,  63.  So  again,  65,  'familia  tota;'  and  23,  on  the  'familia'  of 
Hexham.  So  Bede,  v.  2,  on  the  'familia'  of  bishop  John.  So  the  com- 
munity of  Hy  was  regarded  as  a  'familia'  ;  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  342  : 
comp.  ib.  304  :  the  term  was  also  applied  to  all  the  Columban  com- 
munities as  forming  one  body;  ib.  162.  It  meant  a  society  of  'God's 
servants,'  just  as  a  king's  household  is  called  his  'familia,'  Bede,  iii.  23. 
Comp.  'Thy  family'  in  the  first  collect  for  Good  Friday.  See  above, 
p.  216. 


478  Wilfrid's  journey  into  Mercia. 

CHAT'.  XIV.  popular  East-Saxon  king,  son  of  Sighere  ^, — and,  according 
to  an  inferior  authority,  by  Egwin  of  Worcester,  who 
wished  to  procure  from  Pope  Constantine  a  '  privilege '  for 
Evesham  ^.  Kenred  had  been  succeeded  by  Ceolred,  son  of 
Ethelred,  a  prince  who  appears  in  history  as  warring  with 
Ine  ^  in  the  legend  of  St.  Guthlac  as  persecuting  the  future 
King  Ethelbald  *,  and  in  the  wild  and  hideous  '  vision '  of 
a  Wenlock  recluse  as  a  lost  reprobate^.  In  his  realm 
Wilfrid  found  all  honourable  reception :  the  monasteries 
which  he  was  anxious  to  visit  were  all  in  good  order :  he 
went  about  among  them,  'increasing  their  livelihood  by 
domains,  or  gladdening  their  hearts  with  money  ^.'     Once, 

^  Chronicle,  a.  709  ;  Lappenberg,  i.  223.  Bede,  v,  19,  calls  Offa  '  juvenis 
amantissimae  aetatis  et  venustatis,  totaeque  suae  genti  ad  tenenda 
.servandaque  regni  sceptra  exoptatissimus  .  .  .  Qui  .  .  .  reliquit  uxorem  .  .  . 
et  patriam  propter  Christum,'  &c.  Even  Bede  could  not  see  that  Offa,  in 
the  prime  of  strength,  would  have  more  truly  acted  '  propter  Christum  * 
by  doing  the  royal  duty  laid  upon  him.  (Above,  pp.  144,  404.)  See 
the  striking  anecdote  of  the  Emperor  Henry  II  being  received  by  an 
abbot  at  Verdun  into  his  community,  and  then  commanded,  in  virtue  of 
monastic  obedience,  to  return  to  the  government  confided  to  him  by  God  ; 
Dunham's  Germ.  Empire,  ii.  138.  Hen.  Hunt,  is  enthusiastic  :  '  O  Deus 
bone,  quae  et  qualia  diademata  eis  reddes  ! '  Ceolwulf,  Bede's  royal  friend, 
who  became  king  of  Northumbria  in  729,  became  a  monk  in  Lindisfarne 
i"^  737  (see  Marmion,  c.  2).  A  similar  retirement  by  his  successor 
Eadbert,  the  last  of  the  great  Northumbrian  kings,  in  758,  was  the  occasion 
of  disastrous  anarchy.  Elmham,  p.  236,  says  that  Offa  acted  by  advice  of 
Ethelred's  sister  Kineswith,  or  Kyneswide,  a  nun  in  the  convent  founded 
at  Caistor  for  her  sister  Kyniburga,  the  widow  of  Alchfrid.  He  was 
succeeded  by  Selred,  son  of  Sigebert  the  Good. 

^  Ann.  SS.  Bened.  iii.  334  ;  Chron.  Evesh.  p.  10.  The  extant  *  privilege 
of  Constantino'  is  called  by  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  281,  *  spurious.' 
Egwin  could  not  have  set  off  before  June  if  he  buried  Aldhelm.  Constantine 
sat  from  708  to  715  ;  that  he  probably  made  some  concessions  as  to  the 
canons  of  the  Greek  council  'in  TruUo,'  see  Hodgkin,  vi.  378. 

'  Chronicle,  a.  715.  He  is  mentioned  as  a  benefactor  to  the  church  of 
St.  Mary  at  Evesham  ;  Chron.  Evesh.  p.  72. 

*  Ann.  SS.  Bened.  iii.  279. 

'  Boniface,  Ep.  20.  In  Ep.  62  Boniface  denounces  him  and  king  Osred 
of  Northumbria  for  'adulterium  nonnarum,'  and  adds,  with  a  terrible 
positiveness,  that  he  died  at  a  feast,  mad,  and  impenitent.  See  Lappen- 
berg, i.  224.  Henry  of  Huntingdon  calls  him  '  patriae  et  avitae  virtutis 
haeres,'  iv.  7. 

*  Eddi,  64.  The  legend  of  St.  Egwin  (Chron.  Evesh.  p.  11^  makes 
Wilfrid  take  part  in  the  dedication  of  the  minster  of  Evesham  in  this 
very  year,  after  the  return  of  Egwin,  and  by  order  of  a  synod  ;  but  this 
is  incredible.     He  may  have  become  acquainted,  tlien  or  in  704-5,  with 


i 


His  Death.  479 

while  riding  along  with  Tathert,  he  recounted  from  memory  chap.  xiv. 
all  thp  events  of  his  past  life.  Nothing  was  forgotten: 
every  bit  of  property  which  he  had  given,  or  now  willed 
to  give,  to  his  abbots,  was  duly  specified :  he  named  his 
beloved  Acca  as  the  future  abbot  of  Hexham.  That  ride 
must  have  been  a  memorable  one  to  the  future  abbot  of 
Ripon:  he  must  have  listened  to  an  autobiography  of 
almost  matchless  interest, —the  whole  splendid  exciting 
story,  beginning  with  the  boy's  presentation  to  Queen 
Eanfled,  and  passing  through  scenes  so  varied  and  so  event- 
ful as  no  other  prelate  of  that  age  could  have  claimed  as 
portions  of  his  experience.  At  last  Wilfrid  reached  his 
minster  of  St.  Andrew  at  Oundle,  where  another  illness 
ere  long  warned  him  that  the  hour  was  at  last  come ;  he  Death  of 
uttered  a  few  parting  admonitions,  'leaned  back  his  head 
upon  the  pillow,  and  went  to  his  rest  without  groan  or 
murmur,' just  at  the  moment  when  the  monks  in  choir, 
who  were  keeping  up  on  his  behalf  a  ceaseless  round  of 
psalmody,  had  reached  the  sublime  inspiriting  verse,  '  Thou 
shalt  send  forth  Thy  Spirit,  and  they  shall  be  created,  and 
Thou  shalt  renew  the  face  of  the  earth.'  It  was  probably 
on  a  Thursday  ^  in  October, — the  year  being  doubtless  709. 
He  was  buried  in  his  best-loved  church,  the  minster  of 
Ripon,  after  an  elaborate  and  solemn  preparation  of  the 
corpse  ^,  and  a  processional  funeral-journey.     Hardly  any 

the  Mercian  ealdorman  Friodored,  *■  a  man  full  of  the  missionary  spirit  * 
(Stubbs,  on  Found,  of  Peterborough,  p.  lo),  the  founder  of  a  church  at 
Bredon. 

^  Tatbert  used  to  keep  all  Thursdays,  in  memorial  of  his  death,  as  if 
they  were  Sundays,  with  a  feast,  'in  epulis  ; '  Eddi,  64.  October  12  was 
the  day  always  kept  in  his  honour ;  but  it  could  hardly  be  the  day  of  his 
death,  for  in  709  it  fell  on  a  Saturday.  Probably  the  true  day  was 
October  3  (a  Thursday  in  709),  for  *  the  obituary  of  the  church  of  Durham 
fixes'  his  'depositio'  on  that  day;  see  Raine,  i.  81.  To  date  his  death 
earlier  than  the  autumn  of  that  year  would  disturb  our  notes  of  time,  for 
he  could  not  be  said  to  have  completed  forty-five  years  of  episcopate 
in  April  of  709,  nor  would  this  give  time  for  Ceolred's  message  after 
his  accession  and  for  the  Mercian  sojourn  :  and  yet  the  Martyrologium 
Poeticum  of  Bede  dates  his  death  April  24,  and  so  Smith's  Bede,  p.  759, 
and  Alb.  Butler  on  Oct.  12.  The  abbot  of  Oundle  at  this  time  was 
Cuthbald. 

^  An  abbot  named  Bacula  spread  a  linen  cloth  (sindonem  suam)  on  the 


480 


Death  of  Wilfrid. 


Close  of 
a  great 
period. 


CHAP.  XIV.  one  refrained  from  weeping  while,  amid  the  loud  chant  of 
the  monastic  choir,  the  great  bishop  was  borne  to  his  grave 
on  the  south  side  of  the  altar.  He  was  '  in  his  seventy- 
sixth  year,  and  had  been  forty-five  years  a  bishop  \' 
reckoning,  probably,  from  his  election  in  the  early  autumn 
of  664. 

So  passed  away  the  '  St.  Wilfrid  '  of  our  forefathers  ^ ; 
a  man  by  no  means  free  from  faults  or  weaknesses, — a  man 
whose  public  conduct  had  some  results  prejudicial  to  his 
native  Church,  and  who  does  not  rise  entirely  superior  to 
the  influences  of  power  and  high  state, — but  after  all  one 
who  worthily  concludes  the  most '  brilliant  period  ^ '  of  our 
ancient  ecclesiastical  history.  After  his  death,  a  generation 
of  lesser  men  succeeds:  there  is  hardly  any  striking  or 
impressive  character  among  those  who  appear  in  the  public 
life  of  the  Church  ^,  until  Egbert  of  York  establishes  and 
adorns  the  Northern  archbishopric,  and  his  successor  Albert 
carries  on  the  glory  of  its  theological  school.  Corruptions 
of  various  kinds  become  rife  in  monasteries  :  the  vivid 
intensity  of  religious  faith,  the  fresh  enthusiasm  of  devo- 
tion, which  marked  the  earlier  time,  die  out  piteously 
among  clerks  and  laics :  a  lofty  and  holy  soul  like  Bede  s 
finds  itself  left  to  look  on  a  deteriorated  clergy,  and  a 
people  practically  relapsing  towards  indifference  ^ :  one  can 
conceive  of  him  as  taking  refuge  from  contemporary  deca- 
dence amid  the  noble  forms  which  he  perpetuates  in  his 
History.     A  great  age,  in  short,  expires  with  Wilfrid ;  and 


ground,  and  upon  it  the  corpse  was  washed  and  arrayed.  Comp.  Lingard, 
A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  48.  On  the  question  whether  his  bones  (all  but  a  small 
portion")  were  translated  to  Canterbury,  see  Raine's  preface  to  Hist.  Ch. 
York,  i.  p.  xliii.     His  shrine  stood  in  the  north  choir  aisle  of  Ripon. 

^  Eddi,  63,  says  forty-six.  Bede,  v.  19,  'post  quadraginta  et  quinque 
annos  accepti  episcopatus.*  Eadmer  says,  c.  6t,  in  the  seventy-fifth  year 
of  his  life  and  forty-fifth  of  his  episcopate.  Eadmer  begins  by  dating  his 
birth  in  634  ;  c,  i.     See  above,  p.  241. 

^  *  In  many  respects  the  star  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Church  ; '  Raine,  i,  77. 

^  See  Freeman,  i.  30, 

*  For  St.  Boniface  does  not  count  as  one  of  the  great  churchmen  living 
and  working  in  England  ;  and  Bede  hardly  ever  left  his  cloister. 

^  See  his  Ep.  to  Egbert ;  and  on  the  general  apathy  as  to  learning,  his 
Explan.  Apocal.  praef.  '  Anglorum  gentis  inertiae  ...  ad  lectionem.' 


Retrospect,  481 

it  is  but  fitting  that  the  death  of  the  Apostle  of  Sussex  and  chap.  xiv. 
of  Wight  should  terminate  the  story  of  the  extension  of 
*  the  Vine '  through  the  land,  as,  amid  many  vicissitudes, 
'  room  was  made  for  it,' — the  story  of  a  work  more  solidly 
and  healthily  accomplished  ^  than  in  other  lands  and  by 
other  agents,  the  work  of  our  national  conversion.  That 
conversion,  it  is  obvious  to  remark,  involves  the  formation 
of  a  new  *  Church  of  the  English,'  not  the  development  or 
extension  of  the  'ancient  British  Church.'  The  English 
Church  did  not  grow  out  of  the  British  ;  the  missionaries 
who  brought  the  Saxon  or  Anglian  tribes  into  the  fellow- 
ship of  Christ's  Kingdom  were  men  from  the  Continent,  or 
men  of  Irish  race,  or  Englishmen  like  Cedd  or  Wilfrid  ; 
they  were  in  no  instance  '  Britons '  or  '  Welshmen  ^.'  Long 
after  the  conversion  was  completed,  the  '  British '  Christians 
held  aloof  from  the  '  Saxon '  Christians  ^ ;  it  was  but  by 
degrees  during  the  next  centuries  that  they  conformed  to 
the  '  Catholic  Easter,'  and  entered  into  fellowship  with  the 
younger  and  stronger  Church.  It  is  necessary  to  state  this 
in  plain  words,  because  of  the  inaccurate  language  which 
has  often  obscured  the  facts  under  the  influence,  perhaps,  of 
a  strong  preconception,  controversial  or  *  patriotic'  And 
these  facts,  for  history's  sake,  must  be  kept  distinctly  in 
view. 

^  *  In  no  part  of  the  world  did  Christianity  make  its  way  in  a  more 
honourable  manner ; '  Freeman,  i.  29.  *  Nowhere  else  did  Christianity 
make  a  deeper  or  more  lasting  impression  ;'  Kemble,  ii.  363, — and  see  the 
whole  striking  passage.  *In  a  single  century  England  became  known  to 
Christendom  as  a  fountain  of  light  .  .  .  Scarcely  was  Christianity  pre- 
sented to  the  Anglo-Saxons  .  .  .  when  they  embraced  it  with  singular 
fidelity  and  singleness  of  heart;'  Bp.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  251.  See 
also  Gardiner,  Student's  Hist,  of  Engl.  p.  49,  and  Dean  Church,  quoted 
below. 

*  Bp.  Browne  insists  strongly  on  this  fact.  *  The  British  Church  had 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  conversion  of  England  or  of  the  English  ; 
nothing  to  do  with  the  origin  or  early  work  of  the  Church  of  England.' 
Conversion  of  the  Heptarchy,  p.  181. 

^  See  Bp.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  252,  on  this  'attitude  of  the  Britons.' 
Of  course  it  is  likely  enough  that,  here  and  there,  Britons,  *  living  on, 
as  useful  theows'  (Freeman,  Four  Lectures,  p.  109  ,  under  Saxons  or 
Angles,  used  influence  in  favour  of  the  faith  to  which  they  clung. 
But  of  such  'witnessing  for  Christ,'  however  effective,  history  can  know 
nothing. 

li 


sion. 


482  Retrospect, 

CHAP.  XIV.  But  whatever  else  we  remember  or  forget  as  to  this  great 
Conclu-  religious  movement  to  which  our  own  debt  is  so  incal- 
culable, let  us  bear  in  mind  two  things  that  shine  out  in 
those  who  responded  most  readily  to  its  touch,  whose  lives 
were  the  best  monuments  of  its  power.  One  is,  the  simple 
loyal  thoroughness,  the  unreserved  '  perf ectness  of  heart,' 
with  which,  having  accepted  the  Faith  as  the  explanation 
of  man's  destiny,  they  accepted  withal  the  practical  obliga- 
tions which  were  proposed  to  them  as  arising  out  of  it,  or 
even  seemed  to  think  only  of  how  they  could  do  most  in 
order  to  attain  holiness  and  salvation.  The  other  is  that 
passion  for  'winning  souls,'  for  spreading  the  new-found 
light  among  their  heathen  countrymen  or  their  Teutonic 
kinsmen  abroad,  which  passed  on  through  those  first 
generations  of  English  Christians  the  '  fiery  torch '  of 
missionary  ardour.  It  is  the  typical  laymen  of  the  several 
kingdoms  who  most  conspicuously  illustrate  these  true  con- 
ditions of  Church  life.  We  think  not  only  of  the  noble 
earnestness  of  Ethelbert,  of  the  heroic  sanctity  of  Oswald, 
of  the  sweet  humility  of  Oswin,  but  of  the  genuine  conver- 
sions of  Eadbald  and  Kenwalch,  of  the  thoughtful  co- 
operation of  Edwin  and  Sigebert  the  Learned  with  Paulinus 
and  with  Felix,  of  the  family  piety  of  the  court  of  Anna, 
of  Edwin  'persuading'  Eorpwald,  of  Oswy  discoursing  to 
Sigebert  the  Good,  of  Sebbi  sustaining  his  people's  faith 
under  '  a  great  trial  of  affliction,'  of  the  wonderful  outburst 
of  Christian  enthusiasm  among  the  children  and  grand- 
children of  Penda.  Nor  can  we  forget  how  impressive  and 
attractive  was  the  manifest  consistency  of  the  preachers' 
conduct  with  their  Gospel  ^ ;  nor  how  effectively  the  repre- 
sentatives of  religion  in  Kent  and  East  Anglia,  in  Northum- 
bria  and  in  Wessex,  maintained  its  alliance  with  the  learning 
and  education  of  their  time.  To  say  this  is  not  to  idealize, 
to  ignore  any  tokens  of  superstition  or  of  '  zeal  not  accord- 
ing to  knowledge,'  or  to  think  lightly  of  some  accretions  on 
primitive  Christianity  which  our  fathers  received  along 
with  it,  and  which  grew  in  bulk  and  tenacity  after  their 
time.     All  these  allowed  for,  the  Conversion  is  among  the 

*  See  above,  p.  56. 


Retrospect,  483 

magnalia  Dei.  Its  records,  moreover,  abound  in  illustra-  chap.  xiv. 
tions  of  a  Divine  discipline  administered  through  reverses 
and  disappointments,  through  seemingly  premature  deaths, 
and  seemingly  fruitless  labours;  and  then,  again,  of  an 
'  excellency  of  pow^r '  put  forth  in  ways  unexpected,  when 
need  was  sorest  and  hearts  were  like  to  fail  ^  It  is  this 
which  gives  to  the  whole  period  so  pathetic  and  solemn  a 
charm  for  the  Christian  student.  He  feels  that  the  years  of 
the  Conversion  were  emphatically  '  years  of  the  Right  Hand.' 
No  words  could  be  more  appropriate  for  the  close  of  such 
a  survey  than  those  which  conclude  one  of  the  most  admir- 
able of  Dean  Church's  many  admirable  contributions  to 
European  history, — his  lecture  on  'Christianity  and  the 
Teutonic  Races.'  '  Those  ancient  and  far  distant  ages  .  . ,  we 
may,  we  ought  to  leave  far  behind,  in  what  we  hope  to  achieve. 
But,  in  our  eagerness  for  improvement,  it  concerns  us  to  be  on 
our  guard  against  the  temptation  of  thinking  that  we  can 
have  the  fruit  or  the  flower,  and  yet  destroy  the  root ;  that 
we  may  retain  the  high  view  of  human  nature  which  has 
grown  with  the  growth  of  Christian  nations,  and  discard 
that  revelation  of  Divine  love  and  human  destiny  of  which 
that  view  forms  a  part  or  a  consequence;  that  we  may 
retain  the  moral  energy,  and  yet  make  light  of  the  faith 
that  produced  it.  .  .  .  It  concerns  us  that  we  do  not  despise 
our  birthright,  and  cast  away  our  heritage  of  gifts  and  of 
powers,  which  we  may  lose,  but  not  recover  ^,' 

^  See  above,  pp.  132,  150. 

2  Dean  Church,  Gifts  of  Civilization,  &c.  p.  343.  See  also  his  Beginning 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  p.  85,  that  the  main  causes  of  the  Conversion  were 
'the  breadth  and  greatness  of  Christian  ideas,  and  the  purity,  courage, 
enthusiasm,  and  indefatigable  self-devotion,  though  not  always  innocent 
of  superstition,  of  the  Christian  teachers,'  &c.  The  v^hole  passage  should 
be  read— and  remembered.  See  also  Gardiner,  Student's  Hist,  of  Engl, 
p.  49  :  '  Missionaries  spread  over  the  country.  In  their  mouths,  and  still 
more  in  their  lives,  Christianity  taught  w^hat  the  fierce  English  warrior 
most  wanted  to  learn,  the  duty  of  restraining  his  evil  passions,  and  above 
all,  his  cruelty.  .  .  .  Nowhere  but  in  England  were  to  be  found  kings  like 
Oswald  and  Oswin,  who  bowed  their  souls  to  the  lesson  of  the  Cross,  and 
learned  that  they  were  not  their  own,  but  were  placed  in  power  that  they 
might  use  their  strength  in  helping  the  poor  and  needy,'  &c.  Oswald, 
however,  was  not  a  convert  of  the  missionaries  referred  to. 


I   1  2 


ADDITIONAL    NOTES. 


NOTE  A. 

Chbistian  adoption  of  Pagan  Sites. 

•  To  the  illustrations  of  this  subject  in  the  text  may  be  added  the 
following  passage  in  one  of  Mr.  Tozer's  notes  to  his  edition  of 
Dr.  Finlay's  '  History  of  Greece.'     It  occurs  in  vol.  i.  p.  424  : — 

'  The  adaptation  of  Pagan  beliefs  and  ceremonies  to  Christian  use 
must  not  wholly  be  attributed  to  superstition  and  priestcraft.  Even 
in  the  Catacombs  we  find  numerous  Pagan  emblems  used  as  a  means 
of  symbolizing  Christian  truth.  Nor  was  it  unjustifiable  at  a  later 
period  to  facilitate  in  this  manner  the  transition  from  an  old  to 
M  new  religion — for  instance,  in  building  Christian  churches  on  the 
sites  of  Pagan  temples.  The  extent  to  which  this  took  place  is 
shown  by  M.  Petit  de  Julleville  in  a  paper  entitled,  Sur  Vemjplace- 
ment  et  le  vocable  des  Eglises  Chretiennes  en  Grece,  in  the  Archives 
des  Missions,  deuxieme  serie,  vol.  v.  According  to  this  writer 
(p.  525)  more  than  eighty  churches  in  Attica  were  built  on  sites 
of  ancient  temples,  and  the  names  of  their  dedication  usually 
recall  the  names  of  those  temples,  .  ,  .  Athena  becomes  Haghia 
Sophia,'  &c. 

NOTE  B. 

Bede  and  Gregory  of  Tours. 

A  comparison  between  the  *  Ecclesiastical  Histories'  of  Bede 
and  Gregory  of  Tours  would  illusirate  what  has  been  said  as  to  the 
first  age  of  English  Christianity.  The  books  have  naturally  not 
a  little  in  common.    Gregory's  *  faculty  of  story-telling '  (see  Freeman, 


486  Bede  and  Gregory  of  Tours. 

Four  Lectures,  p.  64)  is  not  far  inferior  to  Bede's :  take,  for 
instance,  the  escape  of  young  Attains  and  the  faithful  cook  Leo 
(H.  Fr.  iii.  15),  the  adventures  of  a  priest  huried  alive  amid 
a  'foetor  letalis'  (iv.  12),  the  murder  of  Chlodomir's  two  boys  by 
their  fierce  uncle  (iii.  18),  and  of  bishop  Praetextatus  'while  he 
leaned  upon  a  form '  during  the  Easter  service  in  Eouen  cathedral, 
and  none  of  his  clergy  durst  answer  his  cry  for  aid  (viii.  31),  We 
seem  almost  to  see  the  townsmen  of  beleaguered  Orleans,  alternately 
praying  and  looking  out  for  relief  (ii.  7) ;  or  to  hear  the  terrible 
'  Vua  ! '  of  Chlotair  in  his  death-agony  (iv.  21).  Some  beautiful 
and  solemn  touches  occur  at  intervals  in  the  narrative  :  the  descrip- 
tion of  Nicetius  of  Lyons  as  showing  such  love  to  all  men  *  ut  in 
ejus  pectore  ipse  Dominus,  qui  est  vera  caritas,  cerneretur '  (iv.  36), 
and  the  expansion  of  Ps.  xlix.  17  in  regard  to  the  man  of  ill-gotten 
gains  who  died  with  an  outside  show  of  penitence,  '  nihil  exinde 
secum  aliud  portans  nisi  animae  detrimentum '  (vi.  28),  are  just 
what  might  have  come  from  Bede  himself.  When  we  read  that 
bishop  Salvius,  if  constrained  to  accept  money,  '  forthwith  made  it 
over  to  the  poor'  (vii.  i),  we  cannot  but  think  of  St.  Aidan :  when 
we  hear  of  '  the  common  saying,  "  If  a  man  has  to  pass  between 
Pagan  altars  and  God's  church,  there  is  no  harm  in  his  paying 
respect  to  both'"  (v.  44),  we  are  reminded  of  the  compromise  of 
Eedwald  of  East-Anglia.  Both  writers  give  us  much  information 
about  ecclesiastical  usages,  such  as  the  clerical  tonsure  (Gregory 
even  mentions  the  British  tonsure,  x.  9),  the  nocturnal  or  '  matin ' 
service,  the  frequent  psalmody,  the  'reception'  of  the  neophyte 
'  from  the  font '  by  his  godfather ;  about  the  estates  or  other 
property  of  churches,  the  infliction  of  spiritual  censures,  the  ap- 
pointment of  bishops,  the  holding  of  synods,  the  life  of '  recluses/ 
the  veneration  of  relics,  and  so  on.  Both  narrate  'miracles' 
wrought  at  saintly  shrines  (compare,  e.  g.  Greg.  iv.  1 9  with  his  Vit. 
Patr.  c.  2,  where  he  tells  us  that  he  himself,  when  a  youth,  had 
been  cured  of  a  fever  at  the  tomb  of  St.  Illidius),  and  dreams 
which  are  accepted  as  visions  (e.g.  Greg.  v.  14,  vi.  29).  The 
description  of  Heaven  in  the  '  vision '  of  Greg.  vii.  i  surpasses  that 
of  Paradise  in  the  story  of  Drythelm  (Bede,  v.  1 2).  Both  writers 
seem  prone  to  treat  ordinary  events  as  supernatural  (cp.  Greg.  x. 
25).  The  Paschal  question,  on  which  the  later  historian  is  so 
exuberant,  is  not  unnoticed  by  the  earlier  (Greg.  v.  17,  x.  23). 
Each  records  a  case  of  episcopal  appeal  to  Rome;  but  that  in 
Greg.  V.  21  is  made  with  royal  permission.     Other  resemblances 


Bede  and  Gregory  of  Tours.  487 

might  be  mentioned;  but,  in  spite  of  all,  the  moral  difference 
between  the  two  books  is  even  startling.  The  atmosphere,  so  to 
speak,  of  Gregory's  is  as  heavy  and  lurid  as  that  of  Bede's  is 
luminous  and  pure.  The  contrast  lies  not  merely, — it  may  be  said, 
not  mainly, — in  the  exceptional  wickedness  of  Frankish  royalty  in- 
the  sixth  century,  and  the  remarkable  excellence  of  English  royalty 
in  the  seventh.  No  doubt  the  kings  who  promoted  the  Christian  cause 
in  our  country  were,  on  the  whole,  men  whose  lives  would  ennoble 
the  ideas  of  their  office.  No  doubt,  also,  the  *  Merovingians  '  were 
the  worst  dynasty  that  ever  reigned  in  Christian  Europe.  '  There 
is  nothing  that  can  be  compared  to  their  story  for  horror  in  the, 
records  of  any  nation  on  this  side  of  the  Mediterranean  ; '  Oman, 
Europ.  Hist.  p.  159.  But  what  strikes  one  most  is  the  fact  that 
the  ecclesiastics  of  the  two  neighbour  countries  were  so  unlike  each 
other.  Bede  has  to  tell  us  of  one  prelate  who  '  purchased '  a  see 
(iii.  7);  in  Gregory's  pages  we  meet  with  two  bishops  who  rush 
into  wild  orgies  of  crime  (v.  21)  ;  another  who  assaults  his  arch- 
deacon, on  suspicion  of  fraud,  in  church  on  a  Christmas  morning 
(iv.  44) ;  another  who  persecutes,  even  to  death,  the  friends  of  his 
holy  predecessor  (iv.  36) ;  another  who  asks,  '  Because  I  have  taken 
orders,  am  I  therefore  to  forego  my  revenge  *? '  (viii.  39);  another 
who  drinks  himself  into  epilepsy,  and  orders  a  priest  to  be  shut  up 
in  a  tomb  in  order  to  extract  from  him  his  own  title-deeds  (iv.  12); 
an  abbot,  'in  adulteriis  nimium  dissolutus,'  who  is  slain  by  an 
injured  husband  (viii.  19);  together  with  clerics  who  plot  against 
the  reputation  or  the  life  of  a  bishop  (v.  50,  vi.  36),  or  are  chosen 
by  the  worst  of  all  queens  to  despatch  a  young  king  with  poisoned 
daggers,  and  are  only  afraid  that  the  task  will  be  found  '  difficult ' 
(viii.  29).  Allowing  for  inevitable  exaggerations, — although  we 
may  believe  Gregory's  protest  that  he  has  set  down  nothing  in 
malice  (iv.  13),  and  that  he  suppresses  some  episcopal  misdeeds  lest 
he  should  seem  a  '  detractor '  (v.  5) — and  bearing  in  mind  the 
multitude  of  office-bearers  necessarily  belonging  to  a  long-settled 
Church  in  a  wide  region,  we  must  suppose  that  '  the  Gallo-Roman 
bishops  who  crowded  round'  the  proselyte  of  St.  Eemigius 
(Kitchin,  Hist.  Fr.  i.  74),  condoning  his  brutality  for  the  sake  of 
his  orthodoxy,  and  hoping  to  train  him  into  Christian  kindness, 
became  gradually  infected  by  the  barb^rjsm  which  ma^e  them 
potentates,  and  bequeathed  to  their  succ^sops  a  tradition  of 
violence,  greed,  and  laxity.  As  Dean  Church  has  said,  the  Church 
had  deteriorated  by  its  contact  with  the  Franks  :  '  The  power  which 


488  Bede  and  Gregory  of  Tours. 

it  had  received  from  its  coarse  and  brutal  patrons,  had  lured  its 
cliief  pastors  into  worldliness  and  license'  (Beginning  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  pp.  61,  158).  And  so  we  can  understand  how  the  pedantic 
tyrant  Chilperic,  who  sliocked  Gregory  (v.  45)  by  Sabellianizing, 
and  made  episcopal  faults  the  chief  topics  of  his  sarcasm,  *  would 
frequently  say'  that  the  churclies  had  impoverished  the  'fiscus,' 
and  that  'the  bishops  alone  really  reigned'  (ib.  vi.  46);  and 
this,  although  some  of  them  could  incur  reproach  for  abandoning 
a  colleague  to  his  enmity  (ib.  v.  19).  A  hierarchy  thus  secularized 
might  well  be  apathetic  about  missions,  and  indififerent  to  the  dis- 
grace of  simony.  Perhaps  the  saddest  indication  of  its  lowered 
moral  tone  is  given  by  Gregory  himself,  who,  good  man  as  he  was, 
liating  the  bloody  feuds  of  princes,  and  ready  to  withstand  a  king 
in  the  cause  of  justice  (ib.  v.  prol.  and  19),  could  pause  in  his 
recital  of  the  crimes  of  *  Clovis '  to  observe  that  '  God  increased 
lu's  dominion,  because  he  walked  before  him  with  an  upright 
heart'  (ii.  40).  So  in  the  seventh  century  we  meet  with  very 
unworthy  bishops ;  a  bishop  of  Sion  is  implicated  in  the  murder 
of  a  good  governor  of  the  Jura  country  under  Chlotair  II ; 
a  bishop  of  Poitiers  'is  not  ashamed  to  undertake  the  infamous 
task '  of  carrying  the  heir  of  Austrasia  into  exile ;  others  join  the 
conspiracy  which  killed  him  ;  the  bishops  of  Chalon  and  Valence, 
'deposed  for  their  crimes,'  support  a  pretender  against  Theo- 
doric  III  (L'Art  de  Verifier,  n.  v.  401-414);  and  even  Leodegar 
of  Autun  is  said  to  have  been  party  to  the  murder  of  Childeric  II, 
who,  indeed,  had  planned  his  ruin  (Diet.  Chr.  Biogr.  iii.  685).  Of 
course,  the  greater  the  corporate  deterioration,  the  more  honour 
is  due  to  those  individual  prelates  or  clerics  whose  genuine  piety 
was  the  salt  of  the  Prankish  Church,  and  who,  doubtless,  made 
a  hotter  use  of  such  a  memory  as  St.  Martin's  than  by  representing 
him  as  a  formidable  tutelary  power,  to  be  propitiated  by  savage 
warriors  who  did  not,  in  any  practical  sense,  know  or  fear  God 
(cp.  Greg.  iii.  28,  iv.  2,  16,  vii.  42,  &c.  on  the  'virtus  consueta 
beati  Martini').  It  is  matter  of  thankfulness  that  the  English 
Church  and  nation  have  had  no  such  period  in  their  history. 
After  the  age  of  the  Conversion,  when  missionary  ardour  had  no 
more  scope,  religion  in  England — Bede  himself  being  the  witness — 
lost  much  of  its  fruitfulness  and  its  power.  But  it  never  fell  so 
low  as  in  Gaul  under  the  'Merovingians  ' ;  and  that,  because,  when 
addressing  our  fathers,  it  escaped  the  snare  of  such  evil  support, 
and  relied,  in  the  main,  on  its  own  Divine  vitality. 


Tlieodore  and  Chad.  489 


NOTE  C. 

Theodore  and  Chad. 

There  is  a  remarkable  coincidence  between  Theodore's  ])hrase 
'  confirmentur/  quoted  on  p.  262,  and  the  language  of  the  Nicene 
Council  as  to  bishops  and  prie&ts  ordained  by  the  schismatic  bishop 
Meletius  (Socrates,  i.  9).  '  Those  who  have  been  appointed  by 
l»im  are  to  be  admitted  to  communion'  (on  their  return  to  the 
Church)  '  after  having  been  confirmed  (/Se^atto^eVra?)  with  a  more 
sacred  ordination  [fivaTLKcorepa  x^^porov'ia)!  This  sentence  has  been 
sometimes  interpreted  as  Theodore's  sentence  is  interpreted  in  the 
text;  and  the  word  ^e^aioidevras,  of  itself,  might  mean  only 
an  act  of  benediction,  rehabilitating  the  recipients  for  the 
canonical  exercise  of  their  ministry.  But,  even  if  we  take  it 
as  referring  more  naturally  to  an  act  ejusdem  generis  with  their 
former  schismatical  '  appointment/  i.  e.  to  an  ordination  '  more 
sacred '  because  performed  by  a  Catholic  bisliop  (as  Valesius  says, 
'  Cum  praeter  consensum  ipsius  ordinati  fuissent,  vult  synodus  ut 
ante  omnia  ab  episcopo  Alexandrine  ordinentur ' ),  still  it  does  not 
seem  strictly  necessary  to  impose  this  sense  on  Theodore's  '  con- 
lirmentur  ' ;  the  preceding  clause, '  adunati  ecclesiae  non  sunt,'  may 
be  taken  as  referring  it  to  an  act  which  would  'establish'  the 
persons  in  question  as  thenceforth  legitimate  ministers  of  the 
Church.  And  the  next  rule  in  the  Penitential  employs  the  same 
verb  in  a  somewhat  similar  sense  :  churches  hallowed  by  Scotic 
or  British  bishops  are  to  be  sprinkled  with  holy  water,  '  et  aliqua 
collectione  (some  prayer)  confiimeutur : '  words  which  point  to 
a  supplying  of  what  was  lacking  to  their  previous  consecration 
(see  above,  p.  323),  and  do  not  imply  that  it  was  treated  as 
simply  null.  (Compare  the  rule  as  to  a  removed  church,  Penit. 
b.  2.  I.  I.)  Theodore  adds  significantly,  'And  if  any  one  of  their 
race  .  .  .  has  doubts  as  to  his  own  baptism,  let  him  be  baptized : ' 
he  does  not  say,  '  ctnditionally,'  as  St.  Boniface  afterwards  said 
(Concil.  Liptin.  c.  28).  About  a  year  after  Theodore's  death,  the 
Council  in  TruUo,  can.  84,  ordered  baptism  to  be  administered 
in  such  doubtful  cases,  as  it  seems,  unconditionally,  according  to 
Cod.  Afric.  72.     Compare  the  story  of  Herebald  in  Bede,  v.  6. 

The  question  of  the  so-called  '  completion '  by  Theodore  of 
Chad's  consecration  may  be  illustrated  by  a  view  which  appears 


490  The  Council  of  Hertford. 

to  have  obtained  for  a  time  in  the  Roman  communion.  If  by  gome 
accident  the  delivery  of  the  paten  and  chalice  (*  porrectio  instru- 
raentorum ')  had  been  omitted  at  a  priest's  ordination,  it  was  held 
that  it  might  be  *  supplied '  afterwards  without  any  conditional 
re  ordination  such  as  has  been  the  rule,  at  any  rate,  since  a  Roman 
decision  of  the  time  of  Benedict  XIV,  if  not  earlier.  In  March, 
1554,  Queen  Mary  issued  regulations  to  the  bishops,  one  of  which 
directed  that  as  persons  '  promoted  to  any  orders  after  the  new 
sort  and  fashion  of  orders'  (i.e.  the  Edwardian  ordinal)  'were  not 
ordered  in  very  deed,  the  bishop,  if  he  found  them  otherwise 
competent,  might  auirply  that  thing  which  v/anted  in  them  before.' 
Dixon  understands  this  not  to  enjoin  re-ordiuation,  but  the  addition 
of  ceremonies  that  were  omitted  in  the  English  ordinal  (Hist. 
Ch.  Engl.  iv.  135) :  and  so  Denny  and  Lacey  (de  Hierarch.  Anglic. 
p.  148)  and  Frere  (Marian  Reaction,  p.  131)  treat  the  word  'supply  ' 
as  overriding  the  natural  sense  of  '  not  ordered  in  very  deed ' ;  but 
either  construction  leaves  a  difficulty.  Pilkington,  who  became 
bishop  of  Durham  in  1561,  had  written  shortly  before,  in  a  com- 
mentary on  Haggai  (Works,  p.  163),  that  'in  the  late  days  of 
popery  .  .  .  bishops  called  before  them  all  such  as  were  made 
ministers  without  greasing '  (unction)  '  and  anointed  them,'  on  the 
ground  that  '  oil '  was  necessary  for  priesthood. 


NOTE  D. 

The  Council  of  Heetfoed. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  the  third  canon  of  Hertford,  as  to 
monasteries,  with  canons  of  the  Council  of  Clovesho  in  747.  In 
the  interval  there  liad  grown  up — in  consequence  of  the  privileges 
attached  to  monastic  property — the  gross  abuse  denounced  in 
Bede's  letter  to  Egbert,  c.  7.  A  king's  thane  or  reeve  would 
procure  lands  chartered  as  for  monastic  uses,  build  on  them  a 
so-called  monastery,  fill  it  with  worthless  monks  (of  whom  Eede 
says,  'Wasps  can  make  combs,  but  not  honey'),  and  preside  over 
it  as  *  abbot,'  without  abandoning  his  secular  habits :  his  wife 
would  often  do  the  like,  and  figure  as  '  abbess '  of  a  mock  nunnery. 
The  Council  of  Clovesho  did  not  venture  absolutely  to  proscribe 
this  flagrant  perversion  of  the  conventual  idea,  but  ordered  the 
bishops  to  mitigate  its  evils  by  visiting  these  houses  and  exhorting 
the  inmates  (can.  5).     The  same  Council  also  dej^lores  the  decay  of 


The  Council  of  Hertford.  491 

studiousness  in  real  monasteries  (c.  7);  and  intimates  that  some 
abbots  were  wont  to  treat  their  monks  as  slaves,  not  as  sons  (c.  4). 
Worldliness  had  evidently  infected  many  convents :  there  had 
sprung  up  (as  previously  at  Coldingham)  a  love  of  '  pompous '  and 
'parti-coloured'  dress:  gleenien  and  harpers  were  entertained 
within  the  precincts :  monks  would  drink  freely  before  Terce, 
and  even  constrain  others  '  intemperanter  bibere/ 

It  may  be  observed  that  while  Theodore  was  proposing  that 
bishops  should  not  *  disturb  monasteries  in  any  respect/  he  forgot 
the  danger  of  such  disturbance  on  the  part  of  kings :  compare 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  iii.  394,  on  the  seizure  of  three  Northumbrian 
monasteries,  one  of  them  at  Coxwold,  by  king  Eadbert,  in  757;* 
and  see  Clovesh.  c.  29. 

The  fourth  canon  of  Hertford  undoubtedly  refers  to  monks : 
the  reading  '  episcopi '  is,  as  Smith  calls  it,  '  most  absurd/  Compare 
Clovesh.  c.  29,  that  no  monks  or  nuns  shall  live  in  the  houses  of 
laymen,  '  sed  repetant  monasteria/  &c. 

The  sixteenth  Nicene  canon  is  not  named  by  Johnson,  nor  by 
Haddan  and  Stubbs,  among  the  sources  of  the  fifth  canon  of  Hertford. 
But  although  it  does  not  refer  to  cases  of  aimless  wandering 
('  passim  quolibet,'  Hertf.)  it  may  have  been  in  Theodore's  thoughts, 
as  forbidding  clerics  to  'depart  from  their  church  in  a  random 
way,  without  regard  to  the  fear  of  God  or  to  ecclesiastical  rule/ 

There  is  no  discrepancy,  such  as  Johnson  supposed  (Engl. 
Canons,  i.  94),  between  the  tenth  canon  of  Hertford  and  a  passage 
in  Theodore's  Penitential,  if  we  take  *  Quod  si,'  &c.,  in  the 
former,  as  relating  not  to  divorce,  but  to  the  'expulsion'  of  a 
wife  who  has  not  forfeited  her  rights  by  adultery. 

One  omission  in  these  canons  may  surprise  us.  Provisions  are 
made  as  to  episcopal  jurisdiction,  precedency,  and  unity  of  action : 
a  proposal  is  made,  but  deferred,  as  to  increase  of  the  episcopate : 
but  nothing  is  said  as  to  episcopal  election.  Yet  Theodore  could 
not  be  ignorant  of  the  standing  law  of  the  Church  on  this  matter; 
and  it  might  have  been  thought  desirable  to  take  the  first  opportu- 
nity of  formally  incorporating  it  in  the  legislation  of  the  English 
Church.  The  Cyprianic  requirement  of  the  '  suffragium  plebis ' 
or '  populi '  (Cypr.  Ep.  55.  7  ;  59.  7)  and  the  Nicene  sanction  of '  the 
people's  choice '  (Soc.  i.  9)  had  received  in  the  Western  Church  a 
terse  and  pointed  expression  from  Pope  Celestine  I  in  his  letter  to 
the  bishops  of  the  provinces  of  Vienne  and  Narbonne.     ^  Nullus 


492  The  Council  of  Hertford, 

invilU  deiur  episcojms :  cleri,  plebis,  et  ordinis '  (i.  e.  the  magistracy) 
'consensus  et  desiderium  requiratur'  (Celest.  Ep.  2.  5;  Mansi, 
iv.  466,  A.  D.  428).  This  maxim  took  hold  of  the  ecclesiastical 
mind,  and  is  cited  by  Gallic  Councils,  as  Orleans  V.  a.  d.  549, 
can.  II,  which  also  guards  against  any  forcing  of  the  consent  of 
*  the  citizens  or  clerics '  on  the  part  of  '  powerful  persons/  and  (can, 
10)  recognizes  three  conditions  of  a  legitimate  accession  to  the 
episcopate:  (i)  the  king's  will,  (2)  election  by  clergy  and  people, 
according  to  '  ancient  canons,'  (3)  consecration  by  the  metropolitan, 
or  his  deputy,  with  the  comprovincials  (Mansi,  ix.  131);  and  Paris 
III.  circ.  A.  D.  557,  can.  8,  which  amplifies  the  formula  thus,  *Nul- 
lus  civihus  invitis  ordinetur  episcopus ; '  and  after  reciting  the  fact 
that  in  some  respects  the  old  custom  has  been  neglected  and  the 
decrees  of  canons  have  been  violated,  orders  that  no  'command 
of  the  sovereign,  nor  any  other  condition,'  shall  '  bring  in '  a  bishop 
without  (i)  an  election  by  people  and  clergy,  expressing  their 
'  fullest  will,'  (2)  the  '  will '  of  the  metropolitan  and  compro- 
vincials ;  and  further,  that  any  one  who  '  shall  have  presumed 
to  enter  upon  this  high  office  in  virtue  of  a  royal  appointment' 
shall  be  disowned  by  the  comprovincials  as  a  person  '  unduly 
ordained'  (Mansi,  ix.  746).  Cp.  Greg.  Tur.  ix.  23.  Bede  does 
not  give  us  very  full  information  as  to  the  several  appoint- 
ments of  hishops.  In  some  of  the  earlier  cases,  it  is  probable  that 
the  aflfair  was  left  in  the  hands  of  the  king  and  the  archbishop, 
as  when  Honorius  consecrated  Thomas  for  Dunwich,  or  Deusdedit 
consecrated  Damian  for  B.ochester.  Kenwalch  was  likely  enough 
to  dispense  with  canonical  forms  in  regard  to  Agilbert,  and  he 
must  have  done  so  in  regard  to  Wini  (Bede,  iii.  7).  Bede  attributes 
the  appointment  of  Wilfrid  to  Alchfrid,  and  that  of  Chad  to  Oswy, 
whom  he  describes  on  that  occasion  as  '  imitating  the  activity  of 
his  son';  yet  we  know  from  Eddi  (Vit.  Wilf.  11)  that  Wilfrid 
was  elected  by  the  Northumbrian  Witan,  and  may  infer  that  this 
was  also  the  case  with  Chad,  as  with  the  three  prelates  consecrated 
in  678  for  parts  of  the  diocese  which  Wilfrid  had  ruled,  and, 
according  to  Bede's  plain  statement,  with  Cu|ihbert  (iv.  28)  and 
Oftfor  (iv.  23).  The  same  plan  would  be  followed  in  other  districts. 
Faricius,  as  we  have  seen,  emphasises  the  point  in  regard  to  Aid- 
helm.  In  such  elections  the  clerical  voice  was  represented  by 
that  of  the  high  ecclesiastics  present  among  the  '  Witan,'  who  acted 
together  with  those  of  the  '  freemen '  who  attended  that  assembly 
(see  Freeman,  Norm.  Conq.  i.  102). 


The  Age  of  St.  Aldhelm.  493 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  Bede's  application  of  the  term 
'synodus'  to  a  Witenagemot  (iv.  28,  v.  19;  cp.  iii.  7,  end)  proves 
nothing  against  the  essentially  episcopal  character  of  the  synods  of 
Hertford  and  Hatfield.  They  were  composed  of  bishops:  the 
'  magistri '  or  '  doctores '  who  also  attended  them  were  simply 
advisers,  and  their  *  votum '  was  merely '  consultativum,'  not '  decisi- 
vum/  They  were  no  more  constituent  members  of  the  synod  than 
Athanasius  was  of  the  Nicene  Council,  or  than  Thomas  Aquinas 
w^ould  have  been  of  the  Council  of  Lyons,  had  he  lived  to  attend  it. 
(See  Hefele,  Councils,  Introd.  s.  11.)  No  laymen  appear  to  have 
had  anything  to  do  with  the  synods  of  Hertford  and  Hatfield : 
although  we  find  king  Ethelbald  of  Mercia  '  presiding,'  like  a  Con- 
stantine  Pogonatus,  at  the  Council  of  Clovesho  in  742,  and  present 
with  his  earldormen  and  '  duces '  at  the  greater  Council  of  Clovesho 
in  747,  at  which  many  clerics  Avere  present,  and  were  consulted. 
It  should  be  remembered  that  laymen  might  even  be  asked  to 
sign  the  doctrinal  canons  of  a  Council,  in  token  of  their  assent, 
without  being  at  all  regarded  as  members  of  tlie  Council,  or  authors 
of  its  decrees; — as  at  the  second  Council  of  Orange,  A.  d.  529 
(Mansi,  viii.  718).  The  *  synod '  of  Whitby  was  rather  a  conference 
than  a  regular  ecclesiastical  council;  but  the  persons  named  by 
Bede  as  present  were  all  clerical,  except  Oswy,  Alchfrid,  and  the 
abbess  Hilda  (iii.  25). 

It  may  be  observed,  that  the  African  rule  as  to  one  yearly  synod 
referred,  not  to  a  provincial  synod,  but  to  the  '  general  council  for 
Africa/ 


NOTE  E. 

The  Age  op  St.  Aldhelm. 

In  p.  294,  I  have  given  the  received  date  of  675  for  Aldhelm's 
appointment  as  abbot  of  Malmesbury.  It  may  not  improbably 
rest  on  some  better  basis  than  the  forged  charter  of  bishop  Lothere  : 
there  may  have  been  an  old  tradition  in  the  monastery  that  Aldhelm 
had  ruled  it  thirty-three  years  when  he  died  in  709  (Malmesb.  Gest. 
Pont.  V.  231).  William  of  Malmesbury  cannot  have  been  unaware 
of  the  difficulties  attaching  to  this  date :  for  he  cites  Aldhelm's 
letter,  describing  Hadrian  as  the  preceptor  of  his  'simple  child- 
hood' i^rudis  infantiae^).  Now  Hadrian  became  abbot  of  Canter- 
bury in  671   (Bede,  Hist.  Abb.  3).     On   Malmesbury's  showing, 


494    Growth  of  a  Parochial  System  in  England, 

therefore,  '  infantiae '  must  have  been  used  very  laxly,  and  with  a 
sort  of  exaggerative  modesty,  by  Aldhelm :  and  if  he  was,  in  fact, 
a  youtli  of  sixteen  or  seventeen  in  671,  he  must  have  been  ordained 
priest  by  Lothere,  according  to  Malmesbury's  date,  when  he  was 
much  below  the  canonical  age,  although  Malmesbury  rejects  that 
supposition.  The  bishop  might  think  the  case  exceptional.  The 
difficulty,  in  fact,  is  one  which  reappears  on  a  comparison  of 
Aldhelra's  language  about  his  'infantia'  with  Ethelwald*s  allusion 
to  his  '  white  hair,'  in  verses  written  before  he  became  a  bishop : 
for  these  ver-^es  (see  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  ii.  164,  188)  were  appended 
to  a  letter  addressed  '  sacrosancto  abbati  Aldhelmo ' :  and  although 
Aldhelm  retained  the  abbacy  until  his  death,  he  would  have  been 
addressed,  after  705,  as  bishop.  That  his  ordination  to  the  pres- 
byterate  preceded  his  appointment  to  the  abbacy,  is  affirmed  both 
by  Faricius  (c.  i)  and  Malmesbury  (v.  198). 


NOTE  F. 

Growth  of  a  Paeochial  System  in  England. 

Bede  tells  us  that  Paulinus  built  no  church  in  Bernicia,  and  in 
Deira  only  those  of  York  and  Campodonum ;  but  that  he  built  one 
at  Lincoln,  doubtless  through  the  munificence  of  Blaecca.  (Cp. 
Bede,  ii.  14,  16;  iii.  2.)  Under  Aidan  *  churches  were  reared  in 
different  places'  (iii.  3) :  some  of  these  were  adjacent  to  the  royal 
'  villae,'  as  at  Bamborough  (iii.  1 7).  Birinus  '  built  and  dedicated ' 
churches  in  "Wessex  (iii.  7) :  Cedd  *  made  churches  in  different  parts  * 
of  Essex  (iii.  22).  This  latter  passage  is  the  first  which  associates 
chui  ch-building  with  anything  like  a  settled  local  ministry,  for 
Bede  adds,  'presbyteros  et  diaconos  ordinavit.'  But  Aidan  and 
Birinus  may  have  done  the  like.  The  lack  of  district  churches 
was  largely  supplied  by  the  missionary  activity  of  monks,  as  we 
learn  from  the  early  life  of  St.  Cuthbert  (iv.  27).  We  are  not  told 
whether  Chad  left  any  churches  behind  him  as  the  result  of  his 
evangelical  journeys  through  towns,  country-sides,  townships,  and 
castella^  in  Yorkshire  (Bede,  iii.  28),  but  Wilfrid  'ordained 
l^resbyters  and  deacons  in  all  places  to  assist  him  in  his  work' 
(Eddi,  21),  and  doubtless  supplied  them  with  churches  for  their 
ministrations.     His  energy  as  a  founder  of  basilicas  would  not 

*  Fortified  towns. 


Growth  of  a  Parochial  System  in  England.  495 

exhaust  itself  in  great  works,  like  that  at  Hexham  or  Ripon.  The 
sites  of  his  smaller  churches  would  usually  be  the  central  points  of 
the  several  'vici'  or  townships  (Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  260).  Bede 
expressly  observes  that  'among  the  mountains'  no  church  could 
be  found  to  receive  Cuthbert  when  he  was  making  his  rounds  of 
'visitation'  (Vit.  Cuthb.  32).  In  two  instances  'comites'  build 
churches,  and  ask  bi^hoj)  John  to  dedicate  them  (Bede,  v.  4,  5  ;  at 
'  South  Burton  and  North  Burton' ;  Lingard,  A.-S.  Ch.  i.  157)  :  and 
if  any  such  chapels  or  private  estates  had  cure  of  souls  attached  to 
them,  a  rule  would  be  observed  like  that  which  wns  laid  down  in 
541  by  the  fourth  Council  of  Orleans,  c  33  :  'Si  quis  in  agro  suo 
aut  habet  aut  pcstulat  habere  dioecesim'  (here  'dioecesis'  means 
a  district  church, — comp.  Council  of  Epaon,  c.  8,  '  presbyter  qui 
dioecesim  tenet,'  and  Greg.  Tur.  v.  5,  '  dioeceses  et  villas/  and  vi. 
38)  '  primum  et  terras  ei  deputet  sufficienter,  et  clericos  qui 
ibidem  sua  officia  impleant '  (Mansi,  ix.  119).  In  other  words, 
something  like  an  endowment  was  necessary.  On  this  class  of 
churches,  with  or  without  districts  attached,  see  Hatch  in  Diet. 
Chr.  Antiq.  ii.  1556.  Once  more,  when  Drythelm  awakes  out  of 
his  trance  (or,  as  Bede  would  say,  returns  to  life),  he  goes  at  once 
'ad  villulae  oratorium'  (Bede,  v.  12).  Gallican  synods  indicate 
a  disposition  to  watch  with  some  jealousy  the  use  made  of  tliese 
outlying  hamlet  churches ;  we  find  them  forbidding  any  citizen  to 
keep  the  great  festivals  in  a  'villa'  unless  he  is  known  to  be  in 
bad  health  (ist  Orleans,  c.  25,  a.  512),  and  ordering  every  cleric 
who  officiates  in  the  '  oratorium '  of  a  '  villula '  to  keep  the  great 
feasts  with  his  bishop  in  the  city  (ist  Auvergne,  c.  15).  Compare 
Council  of  Agde,  c.  21,  which  also  distinguishes  these  '  oratoria ' 
as  external  both  to  'civitates'  and  to  'parochiae.'  Gregory  of 
Tours  says  of  himself,  '  In  multis  locis  .  .  .  et  ecclesias  et  oratoria 
dedicavi,'  Hist.  Fr.  x.  31.  In  Bede's  last  days,  as  we  learn  from  an 
often-quoted  passage,  Ep.  to  Egb.  3,  many  of  the  smaller  townships 
of  Yorkshire  were  still  without  any  resident  clergy.  But,  as  has 
been  already  observed,  Theodore's  Penitential,  irrespectively  of  any 
'  capitula '  wrongly  ascribed  to  him,  supposes  such  a  ministry  to  be 
at  work.  Compare  St.  Boniface's  activity  in  providing  each  of  his 
few  churches  'in  Hessis  et  Thuringia'  with  '  custocles ' ;  "VVillibald, 
Vit.  Bonif.  c.  9. 

The  late  Lord  Selborne  has  discussed  the  question  niinutely  in 
his  '  Ancient  Facts  and  Fictions  conceining  Churches  and  Tithes.* 
I  venture  to  think  that  he  has  a  little  understated  the  extent 


496  Miscellaneous. 

to  which  the  elements  of  a  parochial  system,  as  distinct  from 
that  system  in  full-formed  development,  were  present  in  Eng- 
land in  the  latter  part  of  the  seventh  and  in  the  eighth 
centuries.  Bede's  words  about  Cedd,  naturally  taken,  imply 
a  certain  amount  of  localized  pastoral  care,  and  need  not  be 
restricted"  to  two  central  or  '  baptismal '  churches,  such  as  are 
referred  to  in  the  Life  of  St.  Anskar,  c.  22,  where  a  diocese  is 
reckoned  '  small '  if  it  has  only  '  four  baptismal  churches  '  (Sidonius 
Apollinaris,  late  in  the  fifth  century,  uses  *  baptisterium '  in  the 
same  sense,  Epist.  iv.  1 5).  The  use  of  *  propria  provincia '  in 
Theodore's  Penitential  points  also  in  the  direction  of  localization  ; 
for  the  *  provincia,'  though  not  called  a  '  parish,'  is  clearly  a  defined 
sphere  of  clerical  duty.  What  Bede  says  of  the  remoter  districts 
in  Northumbria  suggests  that  there  were  stationary  pastors 
where  population  was  less  sparse.  Ine's  laws  (56)  distinguish 
a  *  church  *  from  a  '  minster  * ;  Wihtred's  also  contemplate  some 
public  *  church -al tars ' :  the  canons  of  Clovesho  distinguish 
'  monasteries '  from  '  ecclesiae,'  and  after  providing  for  Sunday 
observance  in  the  former,  proceed  ('  sed  et  hoc  quoque ')  to  order 
that  'the  priests  of  God  shall  invite  the  people  to  frequent  the 
church.'  If  this  synod  contemplated  no  non-monastic  clergy,  the 
establishment  of  rural  churches  or  oratories  on  estates  must  have 
come  to  an  end,  which  is  hardly  conceivable. 


NOTE  G. 

Miscellaneous. 

1.  The  tradition  about  a  great  number  of  Roman-British 
martyrs  during  the  'great  persecution'  has  had  a  legendary 
connexion  with  Lichfield,  being  represented  in  the  sixteenth- 
century  seal  and  modern  arms  of  that  city,  and  supported  by 
the  popular  derivation  of  its  name  from  'lie'  in  the  sense  of  a 
corpse  (compare  'lich-gate,'  ' lyke-wake ').  But  the  'Licetfelda' 
of  the  Chronicle  (a.d.  716,  731),  the  'Licitfelda'  of  a  marginal 
statement  in  the  '  Gospels  of  St.  Chad,'  an  Irish  MS.  preserved 
in  the  cathedral  library,  is  much  more  naturally  explained  to 
mean  the  '  watered  field '  (from  '  leccian,'  to  irrigate),  in  allusion 
to  the  streams  which  feed  its  twin  *  pools/ 

2.  Archdeacon  Bevan,  who  is  second  to  no  living  writer  in 
knowledge  of  Welsh  history  and  archaeology,  has  suggested  to  me 


Miscellaneous,  497 

some  further  reasons  against  identifying  Caerleon  with  the  third 
see  mentioned  in  the  list  of  the  Council  of  Aries,  (i)  The  name 
*  Castra  Legionum '  was  shared  with  Chester  and  Leicester ; 
Caerleon  would  naturally  in  a  formal  record  have  been  desig- 
nated by  its  name  of  Isca.  (2)  The  hagiological  traditions  of 
South  "Wales  do  not  start  from  Caerleon  westward,  but  come  (as  it 
were)  to  Caerleon  from  the  west. 

3.  Keference  has  already  been  made  (p.  160)  to  a  statement 
which  has  been  popularised  by  the  great  name  of  its  author,  by 
the  charm  of  a  pointed  antithesis,  and,  one  must  also  suppose,  by 
its  seeming  usefulness  in -anti-Roman  controversy.  *  Apostle  of 
England'  is  an  ambiguous  phrase.  But,  taking  *  England'  for 
'  South-Britain  as  occupied  by  the  English  people,*  if  '  apostle ' 
means  the  first  missionary  to  the  English,  the  title  belongs 
exclusively  to  Augustine:  if  it  means  the  missionary  who 
personally  or  by  deputy  evangelized  the  largest  number  of 
English,  it  still  cannot  be  claimed  for  Aidan :  it  was  Finan  who, 
in  compliance  with  a  request,  sent  missionaries  into  the  Midlands, 
and  who  consecrated  a  bishop  for  the  East-Saxons. 

4.  It  should  have  been  observed  that  the  opinion  which  places 
Augustine's  Oak  at  Aust  or  Austcliff  is  supported  by  a  charter 
of  Ethelred  of  Mercia,  which  names  together  Henbury  (north  of 
Bristol)  and  a  place  called  'Aet  Austin'  (Cod.  Dipl.  i.  35).  But 
if  Augustine's  Oak  was  in  that  district,  Bede's  information  would 
seem  to  be  inaccurate ;  for  he  understood  the  spot  to  be  between 
the  Hwiccian  and  West-Saxon  territories :  and,  in  his  view,  all 
Gloucestershire  would  be  Hwiccian. 

5.  The  general  character  and  position  of  the  original  stone 
'basilica'  which  Edwin  began  to  build  'per  quadrum,'  so  as  to 
enclose  the  wooden  'oratory'  in  which  he  had  been  catechized 
and  baptized,  and  which  was  completed  by  Oswald  and  repaired 
by  Wilfrid,  have  been  described,  and  illustrated  by  plans,  in  Browne's 
'History  of  the  Metropolitan  Church  of  York.'  I  have  also  had 
the  advantage  of  visiting  the  present  crypt  under  the  guidance  of 
Dean  Purey-Cust.  On  descending  from  the  north  aisle  of  the 
choir,  one  reaches  a  platform  with  steps  on  the  left  leading  into 
the  newer  portion  of  the  crypt,  and,  on  the  right,  a  well,  which 
is  exactly  under  the  ancient  site  of  the  high  altar.     This  platform 

Kk 


498  Miscellaneous. 

appears  to  represent  the  site  of  the  'oratory.'  Browne  (p.  7)  under- 
stands '  per  quadrum '  in  the  general  sense  of  *  rectangular,'  and 
considers  that  the  seventh-century  cathedral  had  quasi-transepts 
very  near  the  east  end,  and  that  its  internal  length,  as  extended 
westward,  was  about  106  feet. 

6.  The  'ancient  British  Church'  has  been  credited  with  *a 
considerable  indirect  share'  in  the  conversion  of  Northumbrians 
and  of  Mercians,  because  it  had  contributed,  in  the  preceding 
century,  to  a  revival  of  Irish  piety  and  learning.  But  although 
this  revival  would  stimulate  religious  activities  in  a  missionary 
direction  as  well  as  in  others,  we  can  hardly  trace  Columba's 
great  enterprise  in  any  special  way  to  a  Welsh  impulse.  His 
birth  in  521  was  probably  subsequent  to  the  return  of  one  of 
his  future  teachers,  Finnian  of  Clonard,  from  Wales.  Between 
546  and  562  he  was  founding  monasteries  in  Ireland.  He  went 
to  Hy  two  years  before  that  visit  of  Gildas  to  Ireland  which  is 
mentioned  by  Haddan  and  Stubbs  (i.  45,  115);  and  he  died  38 
years  before  the  mission  of  St.  Aidan,  who  seems  never  to  have 
looked  to  'Britons'  for  assistance  in  his  own  work.  But  it  is 
curious  to  observe  the  tenacity  with  which  unhistorical  notions 
survive  refutation  when  they  serve  a  controversial  interest.  Some 
Anglican  writers  have  little  right  to  be  severe  on  Roman  Catholics 
for  faults  in  this  direction.  A  small  anonymous  work,  *  The 
English  Church  and  the  Romish  Schism,'  published  at  Edinburgh 
in  1896,  contains  on  the  84th  page  the  following  sentences :  *  The 
indebtedness  of  England  to  Rome  is  the  purest  fiction. . .  .  The  Saxons 
were  evangelized  almost  entirely  through  the  efforts  of  the  British 
Churches!  The  italics  are  mine.  Criticism  would  here  be  super- 
fluous for  any  one  who  knows  the  facts  and  has  read  Bede.  As  for 
Man,  its  church  is  an  offshoot,  not  of  the  British,  but  of  the  Irish. 

7.  It  is  a  somewhat  ungracious  task  to  note  errors  in  Dean 
Hook's  '  Lives  of  the  Archbishops.'  Haddan  has  complained  of  his 
deficiency  in  research,  and  also  of  his  'frequent  inadvertencies.' 
(Remains,  p.  300.)  Not  only  does  he  repeat'  tbe  old  mistake  about 
the  foundation  of  tbe  parochial  system  by  Theodore,  but  his  animus 
against  what  is  Roman  appears  in  the  extraordinary  statement, 
that  whereas  both  Augustine  and  Theodore  'had  to  confer  with 
bishops  jealous  of  any  encroachment  upon  their  rights,  when 
Augustine    laid    down   the   law,    Theodorus    invited    discussion' 


Miscellaneous,  499 

(i.  157);  as  if  Augustine  had  not  held  two  discussions  with  the 
British  bishops,  and  used,  according  to  Bede,  '  entreaties '  as  well 
as  'fraternal  admonition,'  *  exhortations,'  and 'rebukes';  ultimately 
he  waived  some  of  the  points  in  debate.  The  remark  in  one  of 
Hook's  notes,  that  Theodore  '  had  so  far  condescended  as  to  employ 
an  agent  at  Eome  to  explain  to  the  Roman  court  the  real  state 
of  affairs,'  indicates  the  same  bias.  The  mistranslation  in  his 
report  of  Aldfrid's  '  refusal  of  all  concession '  has  been  noticed  in 
the  text.     See  also  above,  p.  139. 

8.  '  If  we  consider  how  difficult,  fatiguing,  disagreeable,  and  even 
dangerous,  a  journey  between  the  British  islands  and  Italy  must 
have  been  in  those  days  of  anarchy  and  barbarism,  we  can  appre- 
ciate the  intensity  of  Benedict  (Biscop)'s  passion  for  beautiful  and 
costly  volumes  .  .  .  His  last  words  were  of  earnest  entreaty  to  his 
successor  to  preserve  and  enlarge  his  copiosissima  et  nohilissima 
hihliotheca,  of  which  the  chef  d'oeuvre  seems  to  have  been  a  codex 
of  geography,  mirandi  ojperis,  . . .  bought,  like  the  others,  in  Eome.' 
Lanciani,  Ancient  Eome,  p.  201.     Cf.  Hist.  Abb.  11,  15. 

9.  A  curious  pictorial  representation  of  the  popular  stories 
about  St.  Cuthbert  will  be  found  behind  the  northern  stalls  of 
Carlisle  Cathedral.  One  scene  exhibits  him  as  forbidden  'layks' 
(i.e.  games)  '  and  plays.  As  S.  Bede  i'  hys  story  says.'  '  Her  saw  he 
Aydn'  sowl  up  go  To  hevyn  blysse  w*  angels  two.'  '  Her  bosile 
teld  hym  y*  he  must  de.  And  after  yt  he  (prior)  suld  be.'  In 
the  death-scene,  Cuthbert  rests,  with  hands  clasped,  in  the  arms 
of  an  attendant  (Herefrid),  while  another  monk  kneels  in  front  of 
him :  '  When  bishop  two  yerys  he  had  beyn,  On  Fame  he  died 
both  holy  and  clene.' 

10.  An  interesting  paper  on  *St.  Wilfrith  in  Sussex,'  by  Mr. 
F.  E.  Sawyer,  has  been  reprinted  from  the  '  Sussex  Archaeological 
Collections.'  The  author  thinks  it  not  improbable  that  the  king 
of  the  South-Saxon  heathen,  mentioned  by  Eddi  in  his  account 
of  Wilfrid's  peril  in  666,  was  Ethelwalch,  as  yet  unconverted. 
He  suggests  that  the  grant  of  Paghara  to  Wilfrid,  set  forth  in 
a  charter  of  Cadwalla,  which  Kemble  marks  as  spurious,  and  of 
which  the  date  is  earlier  than  Wilfrid's  arrival,  may  have  been 
made  '  shortly  before  he  came  into  the  country ' ;  but  this  is  surely 
very  improbable.     He  quotes   the   eloquent   tribute  to  Wilfrid's 

K  k  2 


500  Miscellaneous, 

memory  rendered  by  the  late  Archdeacon  Hannah  in  a  sermon 
at  St.  Wilfrid's  church,  Hay  ward's  Heath,  in  1881 :  *The  happy 
work  of  first  preaching  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen  worshipper 
of  Woden  in  Sussex  is  the  fairest  passage  in  that  troubled  life, 
the  purest  of  the  rays  of  glory  that  have  gathered  round  that 
great  historic  name.  .  .  .  Great  as  an  administrator,  as  a  ruler, 
as  a  founder  of  churches  and  monasteries,  as  a  zealous  promoter 
both  of  art  and  learning,  he  was  greater  by  far  in  our  regard  as 
a  missionary,'  &c.  Mr.  Sawyer  follows  Dean  Stephens  (Dioc. 
Hist.  Chich.  p.  13)  in  accepting  the  story  of  St.  Lewinna  as  a 
convei-t  of  Wilfrid,  martyred  by  a  heathen  Saxon  before  690. 

11.  In  regard  to  Ine's  connexion  with  Glastonbury,  it  may  be 
well    to    refer    to    Mr.    James    Parker's    published    lecture    on 

*  Glastonbury  Abbey,'  together  with  the  late  Professor  Freeman's 
'  English  Towns  and  Districts,'  p.  98.     Ine  may  be  regarded  as 

*  the  first  founder,'  and  Dunstan  as  the  restorer,  of  the  church  of 
SS.  Peter  and  Paul,  built  eastward  of  the  'lignea'  or  'vetusta 
ecclesia '  of  St.  Mary,  which  was  superseded  in  the  twelfth  century 
by  the  'lovely'  building  misnamed  the  '  chapgl  of  St.  Joseph.' 
'  There  is  no  saying  what  Ine's  church  was  like : '  it  *  may  well  .  .  . 
have  been  raised  and  enlarged  some  200  years  after.'  It  was 
succeeded  by  *  the  church  of  Norman  Herlwin,  as  that  before  long 
gave  way  to  the  mighty  pile  which  still  stands  in  ruins.'  The  spot, 
and  the  adjacent  ground,  are  rich  in  manifold  historical  interest ; 
but  their  incomparable  charm  consists  in  this — that  they  represent 
with  a  vividness  which,  as  Freeman  says,  is  '  unique,'  the  union  of 
the  British  and  English  Churches. 


TABLE  OF  PRINCIPAL  EVENTS. 


A.  D. 

Martyrdom  of  St.  Alban  .......  304 

British  bishops  at  Aries .  .  .  .  .  .  .314 

British  bishops  at  Ariminum     ......  359 

First  Mission  of  St.  German        .  .  .  .  .  .429 

Second  Mission  of  St.  German    .            .             .             .             .            .  447 

Arrival  of  St.  Augustine  ;  baptism  of  Ethelbert            .             .             .  597 

Arrival  of  Mellitus  ;  death  of  St.  David            ....  601 

Conferences  at  Augustine's  Oak  ....  602-3 

Sees  of  London  and  Rochester  founded             ....  604 

Death  of  St.  Augustine    .......  605 

Battle  of  Chester              .......  613 

Mellitus  driven  from  London  ;  Eadbald  of  Kent  converted     .             .  616 

Edwin  king  of  Northumbria       ......  617 

St.  Paulinus  sent  to  Northumbria          .....  625 

Edwin  baptized.     Christianity  in  East-Anglia             .             .             .  627 

St.  Felix  bishop  of  East- An glians           .....  631 

Battle  of  Hatfield  ;  death  of  Edwin       .....  633 

Battle  of  Heavenfield  ;  St.  Oswald  king  ;  St.  Birinus  in  Wessex        .  634 

St.  Aidan  at  Lindisfarne  ;  baptism  of  Kynegils            .             .             .  635 

Battle  of  Maserfield  ;  Oswy  king  of  Bernicia    ....  642 

Conversion  of  Kenwalch             ......  646 

Agilbert  bishop  of  Dorchester  ;  deaths  of  Oswin  and  Aidan  .             .  651 

Peada  baptized  ;  Mission  to  Mid-Angles  ;  second  Mission  to  Essex     .  653 

Cedd  bishop  of  East-Saxons  ;  Wilfrid  at  Rome              .             .             .  654 
Battle  of  Winwidfield     .            .             .             .             .            .             .655 

Diuma  bishop  of  Mercia  ;  foundation  of  Peterborough             .             .  656 

Agilbert's  quarrel  with  Kenwalch         .....  660 

Colman  succeeds  Finan  at  Lindisfarne  ;  Wilfrid  at  Ripon      .             .  661 

Conference  of  Whitby  ;  pestilence  ;  Wilfrid  elected  bishop    .             .  664 

Consecrations  of  Wilfrid  and  Chad  ;  third  Mission  to  Essex  .             .  665 

Theodore  consecrated  for  Canterbury    .....  668 

Arrival  of  Theodore  ;  Wilfrid  bishop  of  York  ;  Chad  at  Lichfield       .  669 
Hadrian  refounds  the  School  of  Canterbury    .            .             .             .671 

Death  of  St.  Chad  .  .  .  .  .  .  .672 

Council  of  Hertford  ;  division  of  East-Anglian  diocese  ;  St.  Etheldred 

at  Ely ;  birth  of  Bede          ......  673 

Benedict  Biscop  founds  Wearmouth  monastery           .             .             .  674 

Aldhelm  abbot  of  Malmesbury  ....             .            .  675 

First  troubles  of  Wilfrid ;  division  of  his  diocese  ;  his  appeal ;  his 

mission- work  in  Frisia        ......  678 


502     Table  of  Royal  and  Episcopal  Succession. 


A.D. 

Council  at  Rome  pronounces  in  his  favour        .  .  '         .  .    679 

Division  of  Mercian  diocese  .....  about  679 
Return  and  sufferings  of  Wilfrid ;  Council  of  Hatfield ;  death  of  Hilda  680 
Wilfrid  evangelizes  Sussex ;  monasteries  of  Jarrow  and  Gloucester 

and  see  of  Abercorn  founded  .....     681 

Cuthbert  consecrated ;  battle  of  Dunnechtan  ....  685 
Mission  to  Isle  of  Wight ;  restoration  of  Wilfrid         .  .  .     686 

Death  of  St.  Cuthbert 687 

Cadwalla's  journey  to  Rome       ......     688 

Death  of  Benedict  Biscop  ......     689 

Death  of  Theodore  ;  Willibrord  goes  to  Frisia  .  .  .     690 

Renewed  troubles  of  Wilfrid ;   he  is  expelled ;    acts  as  bishop  at 

Leicester       ....... 

Bertw^ald  archbishop  ;  death  of  St.  Erkenwald 

Witena  gemot  of  Berghamstyde ..... 

Guthlac  at  Crowland      ...... 

Council  of  Easterfield ;  Wilfrid's  second  appeal 

Second  Council  at  Rome  on  his  case      .... 

West-Saxon  diocese  divided  ;  Aldhelm  bishop  of  Sherborne  . 

Council  of  the  Nidd ;  close  of  Wilfrid's  case    . 

Deaths  of  Aldhelm  and  Wilfrid  .... 


691 

693 
696 
699 
702 
704 

705 
706 
709 


TABLE  OF  ROYAL  AND  EPISCOPAL  SUCCESSION. 

A.D.    597-709- 
I. 


A.  D. 


I.  Kent  : — 

4.  East-Anglia  :— 

Ethelbert    , 

.     [560  ?J 

Redwald 

? 

Eadbald      . 

.       616 

Eorpwald 

.       617 

Erconbert    . 

640 

Sigebert  the  Learned 

631 

Egbert 

664 

Egric    . 

634 

Lothere 

•       673 

Anna    . 

.       636 

Eadric 

.       685 

Ethelhere     . 

654 

Wihtred     , 

690-1 

Ethelvrold    . 

•       655 

Aldwulf        . 

663 

2,  Sussex: — 

5.  Northumbria: — 

Ethelwalch 

Ethelfrid      . 

[593] 

Edwin 

617 

[Eanfrid  in  Bernicia 

3.  Essex  : — 

Osric  in  Deira  . 

•       633] 

Sabert 

Oswald 

634 

Saeward,  Sexred,  Sigebert  616 

Oswy  in  Bernicia  j  Os- 

OT 

Sigebert  the  Little 

about  617 

win  in  Deira     . 

642 

Sigebert  the  Good 

before  653 

Oswy  sole  king     . 

651 

Swidhelm     . 

about  657 

Egfrid  .         .         ,         . 

670 

Sebbi  and  Sighere 

.      664 

Aldfrid 

685 

Sighard  and  Swefred  .       694 

[Eadwulf      . 

705] 

Offa      . 

before  709 

Osred    .         .         .        . 

706 

Table  of  Royal  and  Episcopal  Succession.     503 


6.  "Wessex 


Ceolwulf 

Kynegils 

Kenwalch    . 

Sexburga 

Escwin  (part  of  Wessex) 

Kentwin 

Cadwalla 

Ine 


A.  D. 


597 
611 

643 
672 

674 
676 
685 
688 


7.  Mercia  :- 


Cearl.    . 

Penda  .         . 

[Mercia  under  Oswy 

Wulfhere 

Ethelred 

Kenred 

Ceolred 


? 
626 

655] 
658-9 
675 
704 
709 


6. 


[Sees  in  order  of 

1.  Canterbury  : — 

Augustine     .        .         .  597 

Laurence       .         .        .  605 

Mellitus        .         .         .  619 

Justus  ....  624 
Honorius      .         .         .627 

Deusdedit     .         .         .  655 
Theodore       .        .         .668 

Bertwald      .         .         .  693 

2.  London : — 

Mellitus        .         .         .  604 

[Cedd,  in  Essex   .         .  654] 
Wini    .         .        .         .666 

Erkenwald  .         .         .  675 

Waldhere     .         .         .  693 

Ingwald        .         .         .  704? 

3.  Eochester  : — 

Justus  ....  604 

Romanus      .         .         .  624 

Paulinus       .         .         .  633 

Ithamar        .         .         .  644 

Damian        .         .         .  655 

Putta    ....  669 

Cwichelm     .         .         .  676 

Gebmund     .        .         .  678 

Tobias ....  693 

4.  York:— 

Paulinus       .         .         .  625 

Chad    ....  665-6 
Wilfrid,       consecrated 

665,  in  possession     .  669 

Bosa      ....  678 

Wilfrid  again       .         .  686 

Bosa  again   .         .         .  691 

John     ....  706 

5.  Dunwich  : — 

Felix     ....  631 

Thomas         .        .        .  647 


^  The  date  of  his  accession  is  unknown. 
709.     See  Stubbs,  Registr.  Sacr.  p.  5. 
=*  See  p.  351. 


11. 

foundation  as  English  bishoprics.] 
Boniface 
Bisi      . 
Acci 
Astwulf 


652 
669 

673 

9  1 


635 
651 
661 
664 
678 
685 
688 
698 


7.  Dorchester  or  Winchester  : — 

Birinus  (Dorchester)  .  635 
Agilbert  (Dorchester)  .  651 
Wini  (Winchester)  .  662 
Lothere  (Winchester)  .  670 
Heddi  (Winchester)  .  676 
^tla  (Dorchester)  about  679?=^ 
Daniel  (Winchester)    .       705 

8.  Lichfield  [the  seat  of  the  first 
four  Mercian  bishops  not  ascer- 
tained] : — 


Lindisfarne 
Aidan  . 
Finan  . 
Colman 
Tuda  . 
Eata  . 
Outhbert 
Eadbert 
Eadfrid 


Diuma 
Cellach 
Trumhere 
Jaruman 
Chad    . 
Winfrid 
Saxulf 
Hedda . 

Elmham  : — 
Badwin 
Nothbert 


656 
658 

659 
662 
669 
672 

675 
691 


.       673 
693  +  706 


10. 


Hexham  : — 
Eata  (also  holding  Lin- 
disfarne) . 


678 


He  may  have  been  bishop  in 


5^4 


Genealogical  Tables, 


Hexham  (continued 

)- 

13. 

Leicester  : — 

Trumbert     . 

.       68i 

Cuthwin 

. 

.       680 

Eata  again    . 

.         .       685 

[Wilfrid  administers 

.  691-2] 

John     . 

.         .       687 

Wilfrid 

.         .       706 

14. 

Selsey  : — 

II.  SidnacBster  (for 
Eadhed 

Lindsey)  : — 
.       678 

Wilfrid 
Eadbert 

. 

.     681-2 
.       709 

Ethelwin 

680 

Edgar  . 

.    before  706 

15. 

Hereford  :— 

Tyrhtel 

688 

12.  ^Worcester : — 

Bosel    . 

.       680 

16. 

Sherborne  :— 

Oftfor   . 

692 

Aldhelm       . 

. 

.       705 

Egwin  . 

•     693-4 

Forthere 

. 

.       709 

This  list  excludes  the  ephemeral  and  extinct  see  of  Abercorn,  and — 
if  it  can  be  regarded  as  constituted  in  679  for  Eadhed — that  of  Ripon, 
and  also  passes  over  the  brief  administration,  by  Wilfrid  (while  holding 
York),  of  Hexham  in  686,  and  of  Lindisfarne  in  687.  On  Hereford  see 
p.  300. 


GENEALOGICAL  TABLES. 


KENT. 


Ermenric 

I 


Ethel  bert 


Eicula 


Eadbald 


Ethelburga 
m.  Edwin 


Ermenred 

I 


Eanswith                    Erconbert  m.  Sexburga 
; ! 

Ermenburga    Ethelred    Ethelbert     Egbert    Ermenild    Ercongota    Lothere 
(Domneva)  |        m.  Wulfhere 

m.  Merewald 


.i 


Eadric 


Wihtred 


Genealogical  Tables, 


505 


11. 


ESSEX. 

Sledda  m.  Ricula 

I 


Sabert 

I 


Sigebald 
I 


Saeward       Sexred       Sigebert  Sigebert  the  Good       Swidhelm 

I  I 

Sigebert  the  Little        Sebbi 


Sighere 

I 
Offa 


Sighard       Swefred 


III. 


Redwald 


EAST-ANGLIA. 
Tytla 


Eni 

I 


Anna 


Eorpwald 


Sigebert 


Ethelhere 
m.  Hereswid 


Ethelwold 


Alfwold 


Sexburga         Ethelburga  Etheldred        Witburga  ?    Aldwulf 

m.  Erconbert  m.  i.  Tunbert 

2.  Egfrid 


IV. 

BERNIOIA. 

Ethelfrid  m.  i.  Bebba 
/2.  Acha 


Eanfrid 


Oswald 
Ethelwald 


Oswy 


Alchfiid  Alchfled      Osthryd  Egfrid 

m.  Kyniburga    m.  Peada    m.  Ethelred 


Ebbe 


Alfwin      Elfled 


Osric  Oswald        Kyniburga,  junior 


Oshere  ? 


Alifrid 
the  Wise 

I 

Osred 


5o6 


Genealogical  Tables, 


I  I 

Unnamed  Acha 


V. 

DEIRA. 


Hereric  Osfrid 

m.  Beorhtswith 
I 

Hilda        Hereswid  Yffi 


Yffi 


Ella 

I 

Edwin  m.  i.  Cw^aburga 
y^2.  Ethelburga 


Eadf] 


Elfric 

I 
Osric 


rid    Wuscfrea 


Eanfled 
m.  Oswy 


Oswin 


Ceawlin 

I 


Cutha 

I 
Ceadda 

I 
Kenbert 

Cadwalla 


VI. 

WESSEX. 
From  Cerdic 


Cwichelm 
Cuthred 


Cutliwin 

I 
Ceolwald 


Cutha 

I 
Ceolwulf 

Kynegils 


Kenwalch 
m.  Sexburga 


Kentwin 


A  dau. 
m.  Oswald 


Ceolwulf 

I 
Cuthgils 

1 
Kenferth 

I 
Kenfus 

Escwin 


Kenred 


Ine 


Cwenburga        Cuthburga 


Ingild 

ancestor  of 

Egbert 

It  should  be  added  that  Florence,  after  mentioning  Sexburga's  reign, 
adds,  *  Deinde  Kenfus  duobus  annis,  secundum  dicta  regis  ^Ifredi  ;  juxta  vero 
Chronicam  Anglicam,  filius  ejus  iEscwinus  : '  (App.  to  Chron.) 

VII. 

MERCIA. 

Penda  m.  Kynwise  (Kyneswith) 

I 


Peada 
Alchfled 


Wulfhere 
m.  Ermenild 


Ethelred 
m.  Osthryd 


Merewald 
m.  Domneva 

I 


Merchelm 


Kenred       Werburga      Berthwald        Ceolred 


Mildred 


I  I  r 

Milburga   Mildgith   Merewin 


Kyneswith, 
junior 


Some  insignificant  names  have  been  omitted. 


Kyniburga 
m.  Alchfrid 


Wilburga  ? 
m.  Frithwald 

I 
Osyth 


INDEX. 


A. 

Aaron,  martyr,  8,  ii. 
Abandonment  of  royal  duty,  144. 
Abbots,  election  of,  430,  473. 
Abercorn,  see  of,  364,  373,  378. 
Aberystwyth,  35. 
Abingdon,  monastery  of,  42,  298,  299, 

473.    . 
Absolutism  in  Theodore,  321. 
Acca,  bishop,  447,  455,  475,  479. 
Acci  (^cci,  jEcca,  Acce),  bishop  of 

Dunwich,  285,  408. 
Adalgis,  king,  327,  328,  417. 
Adamuan,  abbot  of  Hy,   7,   19,  36, 

43.  53,  59,  69,  81,  290,  379,  468. 
Adamnan,  monk,  290. 

*  Ad  Barvae,'  263. 
Adda,  mission-priest,  194. 
Addi,  earl,  460. 

Adelphius  (Adelfius),  British  bishop, 

10. 
Adeodatus,  pope,  299. 
Advent,  the  season,  401. 
^dgils,  monk,  290. 
JElfric,  61. 

^ona  (Mon&n),  249,  269. 
^sc,  and  ^scingas,  405. 
-^tla,  bishop  of  Dorchester,  349,  351. 

*  -^tswinapathe,'  see  Easterfield. 
African  Church,  44,  46,  70,  78,  79,  81, 

278,  280,  281;  against  'trans- 
marine '  appeals,  323,  324. 

Agapetus,  pope,  45. 

Agatho,  pope,  354,  355,  357,  360,  362, 
438 ;  on  Wilfrid's  ease,  330-335j  395» 
440,  449,  450,  452,  460. 

Agatho,  priest,  223. 

Agde,  council  of,  42,  82,  275. 

Agilbert,  bishop  of  Dorchester,  183, 
185,  190,  208,  209,  222,  223,  241, 
242,  247,  255,  273. 

Agricola,  Pelagian,  16,  19. 

Aidan,  St.  {Md&n),  bishop  of  Lindis- 


farne,  mission  of,  155  ff. ;  character 
and  work  of,  160-166,  214,  235, 
244-246,  303,  310,  497;  death, 
189,  316. 

Aileran  of  Clonard,  1 84. 

Aix,  47,  49,  50. 

*  Alban,'  name  of  Northern  Scotland, 

154- 
Alban,  St.,  6,  8,  20,  21,  73,  113,  245. 
Albert,  archbishop  of  York,  272,  480. 
Albinus,  abbot,  94,  272. 
Albion,  16. 

Alcester,  pagans  at,  436. 
Alchfled,  wife  of  Peada,  193,  204. 
Alchfrid  (Alchfrith),  sub-king,    193, 

202,  215,  221,  223,  240;  rebellious, 

244»  352. 
Alcluid,  see  Dunbarton. 
Alcuin,  28,  56,  69,  104,  272. 
Aldbert,  bishop  of  Dunwich,  456. 
Aldfrid,  king,  373,  379,  395,  396,414, 

4^B,  43^,  437,  439,  44i,  443,  45o> 

452,456-459. 
Aldhelra,  St.  (Ealdhelm),  40, 112,  272, 

294,  410,  444-446,  462  ;  his  style, 

466;    bishop    of    Sherborne,   471; 

death,  474 ;  his  age,  493. 
Aldwulf,  king,  285,  288,  357,  409. 
Alexandria,  60,  67,  68,  88,  89,  359. 
Alfred  the  Great,  152,  163,  182,  296, 

371,  472. 
Alfrid,  teacher,  457. 
Alfwin  (^Ifuini,  JElfwine),  sub-king, 

267,  322,  340- 
Alleluia,  use  of  the,  21,  43. 
AUermoor,  353. 
Almsgiving,  30,  63, 163,185,  221,  382, 

424. 
Almond,  the,  377. 
Aln,  the,  373. 
Alps,  5,  19,  142,  329. 
Alric,  bishop,  423. 
Altars,  Christian,  114  ;  of  stone,  146; 

marble,  445. 


5o8 


Index, 


Alternations  of  success  and  check,  59, 

483. 
Aluhfrid,  477. 
Amator,  bishop,  19. 
Ambleteuse,  113. 
Ambrose,  St.,  42,  57,  170. 
Ambrosius  Aurelianus,  31. 
Anatolius,    88,    464;    canon    falsely 

his,  91,  228,  464. 
Ancyra,  canons  of,  64,  277. 
Andely  (Andilegum),  174. 
Anderida,  26,  342. 
Andhun,  earl,  392. 
Andredesey,  353. 
And  reds  weald,  211,  342,  391. 
Andrew,  Italian  monk,  252. 
Andrew,  St.,  veneration  for,  45,  62, 

100,  182,  479. 
Angles,26-28.43,44,  72,84, 119,  311. 
Anglesey,  31,  85,  135,  145. 
Animals,  fondness  of  saints  for,  289, 

306,  434. 
Anna,  king,  173  ff.,  181,  200,  285,  482. 
Anskar,  St.,  44,  108,  161,  496. 
Antioch,  councils  of,  106,  274,   276- 

278,  280. 
Antiphons,  55,  390. 
Antoninus,  wall  of,  11. 
Antony,  St.,  433. 
Apamea,  78. 

Apocalypse,  the,  356  ;  '  of  Peter,'  144. 
Apocrisiarius,  the,  41. 
'Apostle  of  England,'  160,  497. 
Apostolic  canons,  277,  280. 
Appeals  to  Rome,  321  fF. 
Apse,  a  double,  61,  256. 
Aquitania,  13,  17,  19,  89. 
Architecture,  elaborate,  267. 
Arculf,  bishop,  380. 
Argyll,  Scots  in,  97,  153. 
Arianism,  12,  13,  91. 
Arigius,  patrician,  47. 
Ariminum,  council  of,  13,  112. 
Aristobulus,  3. 

Arithmetic,  ecclesiastical,  271,  297. 
Aries,  50;  councils  of,  9,  66,  70,  112, 

275;  see  of,  60,68,  255,423. 
Armagh,  212. 
Arminius,  deacon,  10. 
Armorica,  19,  21,  23,  35-37- 
Art,    religious,    52,    217,   233,    268, 

355,  390- 
Arthur,  king,  24,  26,  37. 
Artwil,  Irish  prince,  445. 
Arwald,  sub-king,  393. 
Asaph,  St.,  34,  85. 
Ascension- tide,  55,  367. 
Ascetic   habits,    162,   199,  215,   270, 

288,  383,  432,  474. 
Ashdown,  182,  210. 
Asia  (western  part  of  Asia  Minor), 

87,  90. 


Asser,  472. 

Asterius,  archbishop  of  Milan,  168. 

Astrology,  297. 

Astronomy,  271,  297. 

Athanasiu8,St.,  12, 13,43,67,106,276. 

Athelstane,  399. 

Attalus,  486. 

At- the- Wall,  194. 

Augulus,  St.,  9. 

Augusta  =  London,  9. 

Augustine,  St.,  of  Canterbury,  45-109; 

work  and  character  of,  68,  72,  96, 

107-109;  date  of  death,  105  ;  grave, 

113- . 
Augustine,  St.,  of  Hippo,  15-17,  20,  21, 

43,  64,  66,  79,  81,  106,  148,  252, 

257,323,361. 
Aulus  Plautius,  3,  170. 
Aunemund,  archbishop  of  Lyon?,  218, 

242,  255. 
Aurelius  Conanus,  31. 
Aust  or  Austcliff,  85,  497. 
Austerfield,  439. 
Austrasia,  49,  50,  270,  326,  329,  336, 

418. 
Autun,  49,  50,  60,  326. 
Auxerre,  17,  19,  21,  66,  79,  80. 
Avalon  (Avallon),  isle  of,  3,  11,  30, 

352,  353. 
Avars,  329. 
Avon,  the,  296,  435. 
Avon,  the  (in  Linlithgowshire),  202. 
Awe,  ih  Teutonic  Christiana,  264. 
Axe,  the,  29. 
Aylesbury,  29. 


B. 


Baccanceld  (Bapchild),  429. 

Badon  Hill  (Badbury),  battle  of,  26, 

33- 
Baducing,  see  Benedict  Biscop. 
Badwin,  abbot,  457. 
Badwin  (Badwini,  Bedwin),  bishop  of 

Elmham,  285,  408. 
Balder,  82. 
Ballads,  296,  312  ;  fragments  of,  123, 

152, 176,  203. 
Bamborough,  28,  162,  176,  180,  189, 

373,  386,  459- 
Bangors,  the,  33,  34,  85,  94,  98,  112, 

184. 
Baptism,  grace  of,  139,  327,  394,  403. 
Baptismal  rites,  X,  21,57,91,136,  170, 

345,  404,  428  ;  churches,  490. 
Barbury,  28,  31. 

Bardney,  monastery  of,  177,  455. 
Bardsey,  isle  of,  36,  85. 
Barking,  convent  of,  213,  293,  424. 
Barrow,  monastery  of,  263,  293. 
Baschurch  (Bassa's  churches),  29. 
Bass,  Kentish  priest,  272,  422. 


Index. 


509 


Bass,  thane,  148. 

Bath,  26,  29,  84,  297. 

Bathildis,    queen    (Baldechild),    219, 
220. 

Bawtry,  439. 

Bebba,  28,  189. 

Bede  (Bseda),  general  survey  of  his 
life,  367-371 ;  childhood  at  Jarrow, 
390 ;  occasional  mistakes  and  pre- 
judices, 41,  49,  59,  60,  99,  2C9,  303, 
369,  405  ;  caution,  94,  369  ;  con- 
nexion with  Ceolfrid,  246  ;  reticent 
concerning  Wilfrid,  319,  415;  obser- 
vant of  divine  judgements,  291,  369 ; 
quotes  Virgil,  378;  a  model  student, 
368  ;  never  went  to  Rome,  438  ;  en- 
couraged by  Acca,  447,  448 ;  helped 
by  Daniel,  469 ;  compared  with 
Gregory  of  Tours,  485  ff.;  Life  of 
Cuthbert,  388,  398,  437  ;  Epistle  to 
Egbert,  281  ;   works  on  Scripture, 

447'  448- 
Bede,  '  the  elder,'  386. 
Bedford,  29,  193. 
Bedwin,  see  Badwin. 
Bedwin  (Beadanhead),  battle  of,  291. 
Begu  (St.  Bega),  363/ 
Bekerey,  353. 
Bells  in  monasteries,  477. 
Benedict  Biscop,  journeys  of,  to  Rome, 
21 7»  244,  254,  270,  306,  3.^4,  388, 
499;  abbot,  256;  founder  of  monas- 
teries, 307,  365  ;  death,  402. 
Benedict  I,  pope,  41,  44. 
Benedict  II,  pope,  391,  395,  440,  450, 

452,  460. 
Benedict,  St.,  80. 
Benedictine  Rule,  168,  249,  307,  40T, 

442. 
Benediction,  acts  of,   167,  219,  234; 
episcopal,  in  the  mass,  64,  103,  156. 
Ben  Nevis,  15. 

Bensington,  battle  of,  29,  351. 
Beorwald,  422. 
Berchtun,  392. 
Berghamstyde  (Bearsted,  Berkhamp- 

stead),  427. 
Berkshire,  39,  172,  182,  469. 
Bernhaeth,  Pictish  leader,  267. 
Bernicia   (Bryneich,  Berneth),  king- 
dom of,  28,  39  ;   united  with  Deira, 
123,    186;    Paulinus    baptizes    in, 
137 ;  Eanfrid,  king  of,  147  ;  Oswy, 
king  of,  179;    a  separate   diocese, 
322. 
Bemwin,  394. 
Bert  (Beret,  Briht),  372. 
Bertfrid  (Berhtfrith),  459. 
Bertgils,  see  Boniface. 
Bertha,  queen,  46,  54,  55,  77,  114. 
Berthwald,  sub-king,  340,  341,  415. 
Bertwald     (Berctwald,     Brihtwald), 


archbishop,  422,  427,  429,  439,  441, 
450  ff.,  455,  458-460,  462. 

Betti,  mission-priest,  194. 

Beverley,  399. 

Birinus,  St.,  168-172,  183,  199,  299. 

Bishops,  election  of,  491  ;  consecra- 
tions, 60, 66,  67, 107,  155,  156,  196, 
241,  254,  261 ;  Roman  theory  as 
to  'assistants,'  245;  resident  in 
monasteries,  157. 

Bisi,  bishop  of  Dun  wich,  259,  276,  285. 

Black  water,  river,  197. 

Blaecca  of  Lincoln,  139. 

Boadicea,  3. 

Bodleian  library,  MS.  in,  77. 

Eoisil,  prior,  45,  214,  215,  239,  374, 

375- 
Boniface,  archdeacon  of  Rome,   219, 

330. 
Boniface   (Bertgils),  bishop  of  Dun- 

wich,  199,  241,  244,  259. 
Boniface,  missionary  to  Picts,  468. 
Boniface  IV,  pope,  79,  113. 
Boniface  V,  pope,  124,  131. 
Boniface,  Roman  counsellor,  451. 
Boniface,  St.,  12,  63,  108,  144,  354, 

371,  418,  469,  471. 
'  Bookland,'  307. 
Books,    'the    first-fruits    of   English 

Church's,'  77;  procured  by  Biscop, 

271,  355,  499- 
Boructarians  (Bructerians),  419. 
Bosa,  bishop  of  York,  320,  322,  334, 

396,  414,  443,  447,  453,  458,  460. 
Bosel,  bishop  of  Worcester,  349,  350, 

408,415. 
Bosham,  Irish  monks  at,  342. 
Boston,  206. 
'Bdts,'  103,  411. 
Botulf,  St.,  174,  206,  308. 
Boulogne,  113. 

Bradford-on-Avon,  monastery  at,  444. 
Bradon,  28. 

Bradwell-on-the-Sea,  197. 
Braga,  councils  of,  63,  277. 
Bran  the  Blessed,  legend  of,  3. 
Brancaster,  12. 
Breaca,  St.,  30. 
Brecknock,  85,  86. 
Bregh,  plain  of,  372. 
Bretons,  35,  37. 
'Bretwalda,'  the,  46,  84,  loi,  119,  135, 

169,  249. 
Bribery,  164,  320,  337. 
Brie  (Brige),  convent  at,  174. 
Bristol  Channel,  the,  85. 
Biitannia,  Prima  and  Secunda,  lo,  1 1 . 
British  bishops,  36  ff. 
British  Church,  1-39,  112,  275,  465, 

467  ;  did  not  grow  into,  but  became 
part  of,  English,  112,  481,  498. 
British  martyrs,  7,  25,  30. 


5IO 


Index. 


Britons,  35,  36,  38,  39,  70,  84,  89,  90, 
III,  112;  their  suffering  from 
heathen  'Saxons,'  25;  hatred  of 
Christian  *  Saxons/  112,  147,  465. 

Brix  worth,  12. 

Brocmail  (Brocmael),  Welsh  king,  98. 

Broomridge,  338. 

Bruide,  Pictish  king,  375. 

Brunanburgh,  399. 

Brunichild  (or  Brunehaut),  queen,  50, 
78. 

Brychan,  *  family  of,'  25. 

Biythonic  invasion  of  Wales,  16,  24, 
28. 

Buckinghamshire,  171. 

Burghcastle  (Cnobheresburg),  27, 144. 

Burghelm,  priest,  341. 

Burgundy,  Burgundians,  49,  50,  142, 
174,  220,  255,  326. 

Burian,  St.,  30. 


Cadoc,  St.,  33,  34,  36. 
Cadvan,  Wekh  king,  121. 
Cadwalader,  the  'Blessed,'  152,  391. 
Cadwalla,  king  of  Wessex,  391  ff.,  402- 

404,  409,  477. 
Cadwallon  (Cadwalla),  Welsh   king, 

145-147,  151. 
Caecilia's,  St.,  at  Rome,  420. 
Caedmon,  312. 
Cselin,  priest,  198. 

Caerleon,  8,  10-12,37,  38,  85,86,497. 
Caer  Worgorn,  34. 
Caesarius,  St.,  55,  60,  64,  80. 
Calamity,  oven*uled  for  good,  181 ; 

misused  by  apostasy,  238. 
Calpurnius,  deacon,  14. 
Cam,  the,  432. 
Cambodunum,  138. 
Cambridgeshire,  286,  365. 
Campodonum,  138,  146. 
Camulodunum,  8,  10. 
Candida  Casa  (Whithern),  15,  444. 
Candidus,  44,  45. 
Canonical  hours,  offices  of,  288,  315, 

37o>  387.  390.  398*  402. 

Canons,  a  collection  of,  277  ;  know- 
ledge of,  381,  441. 

Canterbury,  ii,  12,  54-57,  124;  arch- 
bishopric of,  60,  76,  256,  423,  468  ; 
its  influence  long  limited,  107,  200  ; 
cathedral,  61,  217,  256,  423,  430, 
472  ;  abbey  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul, 
104, 113,  249,  299;  school,  143,  271, 
294,  296,  399,  416,  429. 

Captives,  ransomed,  382. 

Caractacus,  3. 

Caractonium,  137. 

Cardigan,  30,  35. 

Carlisle,  61,  374,  375,  383,  499. 


Carthagh,  Irish  teacher,  184. 

Cartmel,  375. 
Cassocks,  7,  454. 
Catechumenate,  the,  134. 
Catisgual,  see  Heavenfield. 
Catterick,  137,  138,  150,  187. 
Catwic,  harbour,  418. 
Cearl  (Ceorl),  Mercian  king,  128,  146. 
Ceawlin,  West-Sakon   king,    28,    39, 

85,  405. 
Cedd,   East-Saxon   bishop,   194-197, 

205,  237,  241,  481. 
Celchyth,  council  of,  52. 
Celestine  I,  pope,  17,  18,  324,  491. 
Celibacy,  64  ;  overvalued,  287. 
Celidonius,  case  of,  324. 

Celin,  prior,  477. 

Cellach    (Ceollach),   Mercian   bishop, 

206,  208. 

Celtic  Church,  34,  38,  86-92,  167, 
196;  no  model  for  English,  222, 
232. 

Ceolfrid,  abbot,  206,  246,  308,  354, 
364,  367,  389.  402,  438,  468. 

Ceolred,  king  of  Mercia,  477,  478. 

Ceolric  (Ceol),  39. 

Cerdic,  king  of  Loidis,  123. 

Cerdic,  West-Saxon  king,  26,  28,  170, 
181,  183,  210,  311. 

Chad,  St.  (Ceadda),  162 ;  abbot  of 
Lastingham,  238;  bishop  of  York, 
244  ff . ;  relations  with  Theodore, 
259  ff.,  489 ;  retires  to  Lastingham, 
260;  bishop  of  Lichfield,  262; 
death  and  burial,  265,  266 ;  316, 
320,  368,  388. 

Chalcedon,  council  of,  64,  274,  278, 
280.  323,  358, 

Chalon,  50,  423. 

Chanting,  53,  240,  249,  269,  354,  402, 

442,  447. 
Charibert,  Frankisli  king,  46. 
Charles  the  Great,  418. 
Chelles,  convent  at,  1 74. 
Chertsey,  monastery  of,  293,  424. 
Cheshire,  29. 
Chester,  8,  98,  207. 
Cheviots,  the,  137. 
Chichester  (Cissascsester),  2,  342. 
Childebert,  49. 

Children  in  monasteiies,  201,  347. 
'ChiRho,'  12. 

Chlodwig  (Clovis)  I,  57,  487. 
Chlodwig  (Clovis)  II,  220. 
Chlotair  I,  46,  50,  242. 
Chlotair  II,  51,  78. 
Chlotair  III,  220,  242. 
Christmas,  82,  288,  305. 
Chrodobert,  bishop  of  Paris,  209. 
Chrysostom,  St.,  14,  257. 
Church  and  State,  102,  103,  410. 
Church-building   materials,    21,  136, 


Index, 


511 


138, 166, 189,  191, 199, 233, 238, 

267,  307,  352,  353,  400,  433,  473- 
Church  endowments,  31, 103,  263,  268, 

272,  394,  429. 
Churches,  English,  moulded  into  one, 

257- 
Church  furniture,  76,  267,  268,  307, 

355.  454.  473. 
Church  revenues,  distribution  of,  03. 
Church-scot,  411. 
Cilicia,  252,  281. 
Cirencester,  29,  84,  85,  146. 
Cissa,  sub-king,  298. 
Civilization  and  Christianity,  345. 
Claudia,  2. 
Claudian,  23,  24. 
Clement  (Willibrord),  421. 
Clement,  St.,  of  Home,  i,  106. 

*  Clementines,'  the  false,  464. 
Clerical  dress,  7,  454. 
Clerics,  inferior,  64. 
Cloisters,  107, 

Clonard,  school  of,  36,  184, 
Clovesho    (Clofeshoch,   Cliff-at-Hoe), 
councils  of,  40,  52,  55,  280,  357,  496. 
Clyde,  the,  29. 

*  Coarb  '  =  successor,  1 54. 
Cocboy  or  Coedway,  175. 
Coelestius,  15. 

Coelian  hill,  monastery  on,  45,  48,  62. 

Coifi,  132,  134. 

Colchester,  10,  11. 

Coldingham,   convent   of,    213,    270, 

287-290,  339,  491. 
Colman^  bishop  of  Lindisfarne,  211, 

215,  221-232. 
Cologne,  420. 
Columba,  St.,  7,  36,  43,  45,  53,  59, 

81,   154,  156,  167,  229,  379,  416, 

468,  469. 
*Columban  monks*  banished,  468. 
Columban,  St.,  31,  32,  43,  45,  109- 

III,  158,  197,  205. 
Comgall,  32,  33. 

*  Comites,'  52,  187. 
Commendatory  letters,  279. 
Communicants,  status  of,  411,  429. 
Communion,  315,  347,  387. 
Community  life,  64,  213,  233. 
Compi^gne,  241. 

*  Complaints'  of  Gildas,  32. 
Compromises  with  Paganism,  119,  486. 
Compulsion  not   to   be   used  in   the 

cause  of  faith,  58. 
Confession,  240. 
Confirmation,  91,  269,  382,  411. 
Congresbury,  474, 
Consistency  of  conduct  with  teaching, 

56,  67,  161,  372,  381,  382,  482. 
Constans  II,  emperor,  253,  359. 
Constantine      (Cystennjm),      British 

king,  31. 


Constantine  the  Great,  12,  77,  88,  330. 
Constantine  IV,  emperor,  255,  335. 
Constantine,  pope,  478. 
Constantinople,  41,  44,  48,   65,  77, 

278,  335,  355  ;  council  at,  362. 
Constantius  I,  emperor,  9,  27,  78. 
Constantius  II,  emperor,  13, 
Constantius  of  Lyons,  17-23,  79. 
Conversion,  technical  monastic  sense 

of,  279. 
Conway,  34. 
Coquet,  river,  373. 
Coiinium,  85. 
Corinth,  69. 
Corman,  155. 
Cornwall,  missions  to,  30  ;    Britons* 

flight  to,  38  ;  bishops  in,  245. 
Coroticus,  30. 
*  Cosmographers,  the,'  380. 
Councils,    general,    359 ;    provincial, 

274  ff..  333,  334- 
Crayford,  26. 
Crayke,  374. 
Crediton,  354,  467. 
Cross,  sign  of  the,  234,  315,  429,  443. 
Crosses,   34,   52,   55,   138,  148,    445, 

474- 

Crosthwaite,  34. 

Crowland,  431. 

Cuckhamsley  (Cwichelm's  hlaew),  172, 
182. 

Cumberland,  29,  34. 

Cumbria,  14,  29,  30,  34,  35,  141,  374. 

Cumine,  abbot  of  Hy,  232. 

Cummian,  Irish  teacher,  112, 184, 192. 

Cunedda,  16,  24,  30,  31. 

Cuneglas,  31. 

Cunobelin,  8. 

Cursing,  by  Celts,  372. 

Cuthbald,  monk,  292. 

Cuthbert,  St.  (Cuthberht),  176,  214- 
216;  prior  of  Melrose,  239,  240; 
visits  Coldingham,  289  ;  prior  of 
Lindisfarne,  300  fF. ;  hermit  on 
Fame,  303,  367,  373;  bishop  of 
Lindisfarne,  374 ;  his  episcopate, 
380  ff. ;  retires  to  Fame,  384  ;  last 
days  and  death,  385  ff.,  397,  398, 
434,  499  ;  his  body  found,  437. 

Cuthred,  sub-king,  172,  182,  210. 

Cuthwin,  bishop  of  Leicester,  349, 350, 
408,  415. 

Cuthwulf,  29. 

Cwenburga  (Cwenburh),  first  wife  of 
Edwin,  128. 

Cwichelm,  bishop  of  Kochester,  300. 

Cwichelra,  sub-king,  129,  146,  172. 

Cycles,  87,  224,  464. 

Cynric,  West-Saxon,  28. 

Cyprian,  St.,  8,  32,  252. 

Cyril,  St.,  of  Alexandria,  89. 

Cyrus  of  Alexandria,  359. 


512 


Index. 


Dagan,  Irish  bishop,  iii,  158,  466. 

D2,gobert  I,  king,  242. 

Dagobert  II,  king,  270,  326,  329,  336. 

Dalfinus,  count,  218. 

Dalriada,  Scottish  kingdom  of,  97, 378. 

Damian,  bishop  of  Eochester,  211,237, 

241,  492. 
Danes,  182. 

Daniel,  St.,  bishop  of  Bangor,  34,  35. 
Daniel,  bishop  of  Winchester,  469- 

471. 
Dante,  82,  144. 

David,  St.,  33-37, 85, 86, 158, 245, 467. 
David's,  St.,  22,  37,  38,  85. 
Deacons,  137,  266. 
Dead,  prayers  for  the,  187,  340,  363. 
Death,  sudden,  deprecated,  401  ;  cases 

of  happy,  189,  265,  316,  363,  371, 

387,  425,  474,  479- 

Decurions,  the,  14. 

Deda,  abbot  of  Partney,  128. 

Dedication  of  churches,  61,  79,  209, 
267,322,  323,  377,412. 

Dee,  the  river,  30,  135. 

Degsastone  (Dsegsastan,  Dawston), 
battle  of,  97. 

Deheubarth  or  South  Wales,  85,  465. 

Deira  (Deifyr,  Deur),  conquest  of,  28, 
38;  8lave-boy8froin,43,  75;  Edwin, 
heir  of,  123  ;  Paulinus  resident  in, 
137;  Osric,  king  of,  147;  Oswin, 
king  of,  179,  185;  Ethelwald,  sub- 
king  in,  198  ;  Alchfrid,  sub-king  in, 
215,  221,  240 ;  Alfwin,  sub-king  in, 
340  ;  a  separate  diocese,  322. 

Demetia,  31,  85,  465. 

Denbigh,  85. 

Denisburn,  152. 

Denis,  St.,  abbey  of,  157. 

Deodatus,  Frankish  bishop,  329. 

Deorham,  battle  of,  29. 

Derbyshire,  22. 

Dereham,  175. 

Derry,  59. 

Derwent,  the,  30,  135. 

Derwentwater,  305,  383. 

Deterioration  in  English  Church,  234, 
235,  480,  487,  488. 

Deusdedit  (Frithona),  archbishop,  199, 
241,  244,  492. 

Devon,  30,  31,465,  467. 

Dewsbury,  138. 

Diana,  altar  of,  100. 

Dicul,  Irish  abbot,  342,  343. 

Dilston,  152. 

Dinoot,  abbot,  33,  94-96. 

Dioceses,  Gregory's  scheme  for,  75  ; 
Theodore's  plan  of  multiplying, 
281,  285,  318;  Scotic  church  with- 
out, 154. 


Diocletian,  36,  124. 
Dionysius,  St.,  of  Alexandria,  87. 
Dionysius  Exiguus,  89,  224,  277. 
Disappointments,  59,99,  178,179,483. 
Discrimination  in  teaching,  241,  305, 

381. 
Diseases,  various,  310,  311. 
Diuma,  Mercian  bishop,  194,  204,  206. 
Divorce  and  re-marriage,  282,  491. 
Dol,  35,  37. 

Domneva,  see  Ermenburga. 
Donatism,  9,  44,  261. 
Doncaster,  138. 
Dorchester   (Dorocina,   Dorcic),  170, 

ni,  181,  183,  210,  299,349,351. 
Dorset,  27,  171,  469. 
Double   monasteries,    213,    290,   293, 

311,352. 
Double  procession  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 

360. 
Dover,  126,  430. 

Dress,  love  of  rich,  289,  302,  380,  491. 
Driffield,  457. 

Drinking  habits,  428,  432,  445,  491. 
Dry  burgh,  214. 
Drythelm,  144,  380,  495. 
Dubricius,  St.    (Dyfrig),  35-37,   85, 

245,  467- 
'  Duke,'  title  of,  19,  133,  336. 
Dulting,  church  at,  474. 
Dumnonia  or  Damnonia,  11,  353,  463. 
Dunawd,  33. 
Dunbar,  339,  415. 
Dunbarton  (Dunbritton,  Alcluid),  i^, 

30,  378- 
Dunnichen  (Dunnechtan),  battle  of, 

377- 
Dunod,  see  Dinoot. 
Dunwich,  see  of,  143,  181,  190,  241. 
Durham,  374,  388. 
Durobrivae,  see  Rochester. 
Durocornovium,  see  Cirencester. 
Durovemum,  see  Canterbury. 
Durrow,  59. 
Dyfed,  see  Demetia. 
Dyfnaint,  kingdom  of,  463. 
Dyfrig,  see  Dubricius. 
Dyvan,  St.,  4. 

E. 

Eaba,  South-Saxon  queen,  210,  342. 
Eadbald,  king  of  Kent,  66,  114-119, 

124,  172,  i'93,  482. 
Eadbert,  bishop  of  Lmdisfarne,  191, 

397,400,409,437-.    ,.  ^ 
Eadfrid,  bishop  of  Lmdisfarne,  437, 

458. 
Eadfrid,  son  of  Edwin,  128. 
Eiidhed  (Eadhaed),  bishop  of  Lindsay 

and  of  Ripon,  244,  320,  322,  334, 

340,34^,350,391,396,412. 


Index. 


513 


Eadric,  usurper,  393,  405. 

Eadwulf,  usurper,  457-459. 

'  Ealdormen/  133,  207,  340,  345,  392, 

410,  459. 
Eanfled,  queen  of  Northumbria,  129, 

130,  148,  187,  192,  193,  216,  217, 

479. 

Eanfrid,  king  of  Bernicia,  123,  147. 

Eanfrid,  of  Hwiccia,  210. 

Eanhere,  of  Hwiccia,  210. 

Eanswith,  St.,  126. 

Eappa,  abbot  of  Selsey,  341,  346. 

Earls,  458,  460. 

Easingwold,  138. 

East-Anglia,  38,  39  ;  Christianity  in, 
141-144,  181,  190,  200,  205,  263, 
285^  334,  357^  409^  456,  482. 

East-Saxons,  27,  39 ;  first  mission  to, 
100,  lOT,  117  ff . ;  second,  195-197, 
205 ;  relapse  among,  and  third  mis- 
sion to,  238-247. 

Easter  day,  163  ;  question  of  calcula- 
tion of,  12,  86-90,  no,  157,  165, 
184,  191,  192,  212,  215,  224  If'., 
278,  462  ff. 

Easter  eve,  21,  129,  134,  404. 

Easterfield  (Estrefeld),  council  of, 
439  ff.,  451,459. 

Eastern  Church,  the,  5,  6,  44,  69,  70, 
90,  164. 

Easterwine  (Eosterwini),  abbot,  309, 

389- 
Eata,   abbot   and   bishop,   214,    215, 

231,  320,  322,  334,  364,  374,  391, 

396- 
Ebba,  abbot,  477. 
Ebba,  St.  (^bbe),  213,  270,  287,  289, 

311,  339' 347. 

Ebbsfleet,  ix,  51. 

Ebch ester,  213. 

Eboracum,  see  York. 

Eborius,  bishop  of  York,  9,  lo. 

Ebroin,  220,  255,  326,  328,  336. 

Eclecticism  in  ritual,  65. 

'  Ecthesis,'  the,  359. 

Eddi  (^dde,  Hsedde,  Stephen),  218, 
219,  240,  266,  319,  356. 

Edgar,  bishop  of  Lindsey,  456. 

Edinburgh,  135,  160,  377. 

Education  combined  with  religion,  143. 

Edwin  (Eadwine),  king  of  North- 
umbria, 28,  39,  84,  98,  120  ff. ; 
character  of,  1 30  ;  baptism  ot,  1 34 ; 
power  of,  135,  169,  193,  195,  241, 
310,  482  ;  death,  146. 

Egbert  (Ecgbert,  Ecgbriht),  arch- 
bishop of  York,  235,  281,  316,  480. 

Egbert,  king  of  Kent,  237,  248,  255, 
272,  274. 

Egbert,  priest,  212,  371,  416,  417, 
469. 

Egfrid   (Ecgfrid,   Egferth),    king    of 


Northumbria,    accession    of,    266 ; 

grants  to  church,   271,  306,    361  ; 

quarrel    with    Wilfrid,    317,    320, 

337;  wars  with  Mercians,  291,  340; 

with  Picts,  260,  364,  373  ;  attacks 

Irish,  371  ;  defeat  and  death,  375- 

377. 
Egric  (Ecgric),  king  of  East- Angles, 

173. 
Egwin,  St.  (Ecgwin),  426,  435,  436, 

478. 
Elbod,  bishop  of  Bangor,  27, 112, 467. 
Eleutherus,  3  ff. 
Elfled  (^Elfled),  princess  and  abbess, 

201,  203,  364,  373,  384,  395,  457, 

458-460. 
Elfrida,  abbess  of  Repton,  432. 
Ella  (^lle),  king  of  Deira,   28,  39, 

43,  120. 
Ella,  South-Saxon  king,  26,  342. 
Elmete,  28,  123,  146. 
Elmham,  see  of,  285,  409,  423,  456. 
Elvan,  St.,  4. 

Ely,  convent  of,  174,  213,  286,  409. 
Emmo,  archbishop  of  Sens,  255. 
English  kings  visiting  Rome,  404. 
Eni,  173. 
Eoda,  priest,  406. 
Eonan,  249. 
Eorpwald,  king  of  East- Angles,  141, 

195,  482. 
Ephesus,  councils  of,  70,  279,  331. 
Episcopacy,   in   British  church,    32 ; 

recognized  at  Hy,  155-157. 
Episcopate,  English,  descent  of,  254, 

423. 
Erconbert  (Earconberct,  Erconberht), 
king  of  Kent,   172,  175,  199,  217, 

237- 
Ercongota  (Earcongotae),  nun,  175. 
Erkenwald,  St.  (Earconwald),  292  ff., 

395,  408,  410,  423. 
Ermenburga     (Domneva),     wife     of 

Merewald,  175,  208,  272. 
Ermenburga     (li-minburg,     Eormen- 

burh),  queen  of  Northumbria,  318, 

337,  339»  341,  375;  383- 
Ermengith,  175. 
Ermenild  (Eormengilda),  queen  and 

abbess,  175,  208,  456. 
Ermenred  (Eormenred), sub-king,  175, 

208,  272. 
Escwin  (jEscwine),  king  in  Wessex, 

274,  291,  297. 
Etaples  (Quentavic),  256. 
Ethelbald,  king,  478. 
Ethelberga  (^dilberg),  abbess,  174. 
Etlielbert  (^thelberht,  ^Ethelbriht^ 

king    of    Kent,    28,    39,    46,    51  ; 

baptism  of,  57,  100,  113  ;  death  of, 

114;  195,482. 
Ethel bert,  prince,  272,  291. 


Ll 


514 


Index. 


Ethelburga  (^thelburh,  Tata),  wife 
of  Edwin,  126,  131,  136,  149,  193, 

293- 
Ethelburga,  abbess,  293. 
Etheldred,   St.    (^dilthryd,    ^thel- 

dryht),  174,  263,  268,  ?7p,  286,  317, 

339,  456. 

Etheldrith,  175. 

Etbelfrid  (.^dilfVid,  ^thelfrith),  king 
of  Bernicia,  28,  39,  46,  97-99,  121, 
I93»  310. 

Ethelhere  (iEdilhen),  East- Anglian 
king,  200,  203,  206,  285. 

'Ethelhun'  (Edilhun),  student,  ?I2. 

Ethelings,  123. 

Ethelmund,  sub-king,  206. 

Ethelred  (^thelred,  ^Edilred),  king 
of  Mercia,  accession,  291 ;  religi- 
ousness of,  409 ;  invades  ICent, 
299 ;  defeats  Egfrid,  340 ;  expels 
Wilfrid,  341 ;  promotes  Church 
interests  in  Mercia,  349-352,  416; 
befriends  Wilfrid,  396,  415,  431, 
443  ;  becomes  a  monk,  455. 

Ethelred,  prince,  272. 

Ethelric,  king  of  Bernicia,  39,  121. 

Ethelwalch,  king  of  Sussex,  210,341, 
342,  346,  392. 

Ethel  wald  (Oidilwald),  sub-king  in 
Deira,  198,  201,  215,  244. 

Ethelwin  (^dilwini),  bishop  of  Sidna- 
cester,  349,  350,  409. 

Ethelwin,  reeve,  187. 

Ethelwold,  king  of  East-Angles,  206. 

Etherius  (^therius),  archbishop  of 
Lyon«,  49,  60. 

Eucharist,  the  Holy,  40  ;  celebrated 
weekly,  167;  daily,  420;  aa  a 
sacrifice,  it 6,  420. 

Eugenius  I,  pope,  219,  330. 

Eulogius  of  Alexandria,  60. 

Eumer,  murderous  attempt  by,  129. 

Eusebius,  on  Britain,  2. 

Evesham,  monastery  of,  435,  436,  478. 

Excommunication,  205,  208,  443  459. 

Exemptions  of  monasteries,  104,  113, 

279.  299.  334>  354- 
Exeter  (Caer   Wise),   monastery   of, 

353. 
Eynsham,  29. 


F. 

Fagan,  St.,  4. 

Failure,  a  sense  of,  343,  417. 
Fall,  doctrine  of  the,  16. 
*Familia,'  used  for  inhabitants  of  a 
hyde,  182  ;  for  a  monastic  society, 

^477. 

Family  benefices,  401. 

Family  piety,  181,  482. 


Famine,  344. 

Fara,  abbess,  174. 

Fame  island,  162,  180,  303,  373-375, 

384.  434- 
Faro,  bishop  of  Meaux,  255. 
Fastidius,  bishop,  17. 
Fasting,  usages  as  to,  98,   162,  167, 

199,  290,  421,  428. 
Feliskirk,  i8i. 
Felix  of  Jarrow,  431. 
Felix,  bishop  of  Messana,  45. 
Felix,  St.,  bishop  in  East-Anglia,  142- 

156,  163,  181,  285,482. 
Felix  III  or  IV,  pope,  79. 
Felixstowe,  181. 
Fen  country,  the,  177,  181,  286,  432. 

*  Feoh  '  or  property,  103. 
Ferraraere,  353. 

Festivals,    the    chief,    288 ;    Reman 

scheme  of,  356. 
Fictitious  miracles,  73. 
'  Filioque,'  the,  360,  361. 
Finan,  bishop  of  Lindisfarne,  190-2 1 1 , 

2^1,  322,  400. 
Finchale,  237. 

Finnian  of  Clonard,  36,  59,  185. 
Finnian  of  Moville,  59. 
Firth  of  Forth,  364,  377. 
Flavia  Caesariensis,  1 1 . 
Flintshire,  22,  33,  85. 
Florence  of  Worcester,  342,  349  ff. 
Folkestone,  126,  430. 

*  Folkland,'  307. 
Forfar,  377. 

Forth,  the,  15,  28,  135. 

Forthere,  bishop  of  Sherborne,  474. 

Fosite,  an  idol,  421. 

Frankish  race,  39  ;  artificers,  307  ; 
bishops  and  clergy,  46,  49,  60,  183, 
242,  275,  329,  487  ;  kings,  &c.,  46, 
49,  270,  418;  monasticism,  174; 
schools,  142, 

Fredegond,  Frankish  queen,  51. 

Friesland  (Frisia),  178,  327,  417,  418, 
449,  470. 

Frigyd,  abbess  of  Hackness,  363. 

*  Frith,'  sense  of,  103. 
Frithona,  see  Deusdedit. 
Frithwold,  sub-king,  293. 
Frome,  monastery  at,  444. 
Funeral  rites,  177,  362,  388,  407,  474, 

479- 
Fursey,  St.<Fursa),  27,  56,  143,  173. 


Gaelic  Celts,  24. 
*  Gai,  field  of,'  202. 
Gainsborough,  350. 
Gangra,  council  of,  277* 
Garianonum,  27,  144. 


Index. 


515 


*Gannans,'  327. 

Gateshead,  monastery  at,  188. 

Gaul,  Britons  evangelized  from,  5 ; 
missions  from,  17,  22;  cocruptiona 
in  church  of,  44,  248  ;  hierarchy  of, 
46,  59,  68,  209,  422  ;  Easter  rule 
of,  89,  192 ;  liturgy  and  usages  of, 
32,  64,  92,  242. 

Gavidius,  13. 

Gebmund,  bishop  of  Rochester,  300, 
408,  423,  427,  429. 

Gelasius  I,  pope,  63,  65. 

Genesis,  difficulties  as  to,  447,  475. 

Genoa,  168. 

G  entleness,  Christian,  hated  by  pagans, 
205. 

Geography,  study  of,  499. 

Geraint  (Geruntius),  king  of  Dy  fnaint, 
463-466. 

German,  St.,  17-23,  32,  35,  60,  69, 

113. 
Germany,  13,  80,  354. 

*  Gesiths,'  see  '  Comites.' 
Gildas,  9,  13,  24. 
Gilling,  187,  208,  2T2,  308. 
Giudi,  202. 

Glamorganshire,  34,  86. 
Glasgow,  29,  34. 

Glass  in  churches,  267,  307. 

*  Glassy  isle,'  see  Avalon. 
Glastingea,  473. 

Glastonbury,  3,  11,  33,  352,  353,473, 

500. 
Gleemen,  312, 
Glen,  river,  137. 

*  Gloria  Patri,'  the,  371. 
Gloucester,  4,  28,  84,  85,  210,  353, 

416. 
Gods  of  Saxons,  25,  169. 
Godwin,  archbishop  of  Lyons,  422. 
Gontram,  237. 
Goodmanham       (Godmundingaham), 

132. 
Gospels,  copies  of  the,  268,  413,  437  ; 

reading  of  the,  217,  370,  402. 
Grace,  doctrine  of,  17,  75. 
Gradual  training  of  converts,  80. 
Grammar,  study  of,  470. 
Granta,  Grantchester,  289,  432. 
Greek,  knowledge  of,  252,  272,  294, 

429. 
Greensted,  166. 
Gregorian  mission,  seeming  failure  of, 

124. 
Gregory  the  Great,  St.,  18-20,  22,  23, 

40-46,  52-82,  242  ;  powers  claimed 

^y>    70;    'disciples    of,  141,  190, 

249. 
Gregory  VIT,  71. 
Gregory,  St.,  of  Neocaesarea,  81. 
Gregory  of  Tours,  242,  485. 
Grimoald,  329. 

L 


Guthlac,  St.,  431  flF.,  487. 
Gwent,  35,  85. 
Gwrgan  Varvtruch,  12. 
Gwynedd,  85,  145,  157,  467. 
Gyrvians,  181,  206,  263,  286,  365. 


Hackness  (Hacanos),  363. 

Hadrian's  Wall,  11,  194. 

Hadrian,  abbot,  251,  255,  256,  271, 

294,  295,  361,  408,  472,  493. 
Hadufrid,  477. 

Hampshire,  169,  210,  342,  469,  470. 
Hanbury,  nunnery  at,  456. 
Hartlepool    (Heruten),   nunnery   at, 

188,  203,  212,  310. 
'  Hateful  year,*  the,  147. 
Hatfield  (Hsethfelth),  in  Yorkshire, 

battle  at,  146. 
Hatfield,  council  of,  357  ff. 
Healaugh,  188. 
Hean,  298,  473. 

Heavenfield,  battle  of,  151,  378. 
Hecana,  207,  300. 
Hedda,  bishop  of  Lichfield,  415. 
Heddi  (Haeddi),  bishop  of  Winchester, 

183,  297,  299,  351,  353,  408,  410, 

462,  469,  471. 
Heiu,  abbess,  188,  212,  310. 
Helena,  St.,  77. 
Heligoland,  421. 
Hemgils,  abbot,  353,  473. 
Hengist,  51,  405. 
Heraclius,  359. 

Herbert,  St.  (Hereberht),  305,  383. 
Hereford,  300,  350,  408,  423. 
Herefrid,  abbot,  384  ff. 
Hereric,  123. 
Hereswid,  123,  174,  310. 
Heresy,  Bede's  horror  of,  369. 
Hermit  life,  94,  290,  303-306,  388, 

432-434- 
Hertford    (Herutford),    council    and 

canons  of,  274-283,  334,  413,  490. 
Hewalds,  the,  martyrs,  419. 
Hexham  (Hagulstad),  church  of,  151, 

268,  269,  272,  308,  322,  346,  364, 

372.  374.  39^  396.  412,  447,  450, 

460,  474-476,  479- 
Hiddila,    priest    in   Isle    of  Wight, 

394- 
Hilary  of  Aries,  60,  324. 
Hilary,  St.,  2,  13,  17. 
Hilary,  pope,  89,  331. 
Hilda,  St.  (Hild),  abbess,  123,  135, 

174,  188,  203,  212,  223,  310,  395, 

415;  death  of,  363. 
*  Himation,'  the,  68. 
Hippo,  council  of,  280. 
Hippolytus,  87. 
Hoe  (Hoo),  280,  430. 


5i6 


Index, 


HoBoratus,  32. 

Honorius,  archbishop,  140,  143,  156, 

182,  190,  199,  241. 
Honorius  I,  pope,  148,  149,  168. 
Hope  of  success  deferred,  130. 
Hospitality  in  monastic  life,  215,  304. 

*  Housel,'  the,  411,  429. 

*  Hrofs  castle,'  loi,  182. 
Humber,  the,  11,  43,  135,  139,  160. 
Humility,  in  kings,  153,  186. 
Huna,  priest,  288. 

Hunwald,  count,  187. 

Hwiccians,  39,  56,  84,  85,  210,  342, 

349»  350,  352,  416,  423- 

Hy  (^Icolmkill,  lona),  monastery  of, 
59,  86,  109,  112,  143,  154,  157,  166, 
186,  190,  192,  194,  206,  211,  231, 
232,  290,  294,  342,  379,  467,  468. 

'Hyde'  (hid),  extent  of  the,  182. 


I. 


Ida,  king,  27,  28,  170,  311. 

Idle,  battle  of  the,  xi,  123,  378. 

Idnerth,  35. 

Idolatry,  forbidden,  81,  172,  173,428  ; 

argument  against,  132,  133,  195. 
Ikanho,  206,  308. 
lUtyd,  St,  34,  467. 
Imma,  thane,  340. 
Immortality,    Teutonic    craving   for, 

133,. 193-  . 
Inconsistencies  in  character,  193,  198. 
Indictions,  the,  48.  357. 
Ine   (Ini),  king,    29,    405,   409-411, 

444. 
Infants,  baptism  of,  41 1. 
Infeppingura,  206. 
Ingelborne,  294. 
Inisboffin  (InisJaoufinde),  232. 
Iniskeltra,  184. 
Innocent  III,  71. 
Instruction  before  baptism,  137,  139, 

327,  394- 

Interpreting,  53,  163,  225,  255. 

Introduction  of  Christianity  into 
Britain,  i. 

lona,  see  Hy. 

Ipswich,  181. 

Irenaeus,  St.,  5,  50. 

Irish,  early  Christianity  of,  18; 
Church,  monastic  and  tribal,  232, 
294,  417;  missionaries,  3c,  109, 
343 ;  learning  and  study  among, 
183,  212,  350,  371,  418;  contrasts 
in  character,  183,  232,  371  ;  Easter 
rule  of,  89,  III;  adopt  '  Catholic 
Easter,'  112,  468;  Northumbrian 
attack  on,  371. 

Istria,  schism  in,  44,  63. 

Ilhamar,  bishop  of  Kochester,  182, 
190,  199,  211. 


J. 


James   the    Deacon,  128,   137,    150, 

192,  223,  356. 
Jarrow,  monastery  of,  206,  365-367, 

380,  389,  402,  438. 
Jaruman,  Mercian  bishop,   20S,  241, 

247,  248. 
Jerome,  St.,  7,  14,  16,  17,  19,  32,  68, 

78,  106,  217. 
Jerusalem,  35,  46,  87. 
Jews,  43,  87, 
John,  abbot,  113. 
John,  archbishop  of  Aries,  255. 
John,  biographer  of  Gregory,  40. 
John,  patriarch  of  Constantinople,  44. 
John,  Roman  notary,  332. 
John  TV,  pope,  112. 
John  VI,  pope,  449  ff.,  460. 
John,  the  Precentor,  354,  355,  358, 

362,  365- 
John,  St,  the  Apostle,  32,  90,  225, 

239»  370. 
John,  St.,  the  Baptist,  82. 
John,  St.,  of  Beverley,  52,  72,  397- 

399,  409,  443,  453,  458,  460. 
Joseph  of  Arimathaea,  legend  of,  3. 
Judeu,  see  Giudi. 

Judgement,  the  Last,  351,  356,  370. 
Judgements,  the  Divine,  291 ,  369,  376. 
Julian,  emperor,  78. 
Julius,  martyr,  8,  11. 
Justinian,  reign  of,  236. 
Justus,  archbishop,  63,  loi,  102,  107, 

117,  119,  124  ff.;  death  of,  140. 
Jutes,  46. 


K. 


Kaiserwerth,  419. 

Kenred,   king   of  Mercia,    291,  456, 

477,.478-. 

Kenspid,  widow,  214. 

Kent,  Augustine  lands  in,  51  ;  con- 
versions in,  58  ff. ;  invasion  of,  402  ; 
kingdom  of,  26,  39,  46,  135,  405, 
411  ;  monasticism  in,  272,  308. 

Kentigern,  St,  14,  29,  34. 

Kentwin,  king  of  Wessex,  297,  341, 

39i>  392. 

Kenwalch  (Coinwalch,Cenwalh),  king 
of  Wessex,  180-182,  200,  208-210, 
221,  247,  273,  297,  352,  393^  482. 

Kenwald,  monk,  330. 

Kildare,  convent  at,  157,  213. 

Kilmuine,  see  Menevia. 

Kineswith,  nun,  daughter  of  Penda, 

193,  478.   , 
Kings,  genuine  religiousness  of,  482  ; 

prayed  for,  428. 
Kirkmadrine,  sculptures  at,  15. 
Kirton  in  Lincolnshire,  206. 


Index. 


517 


Kymrians  or  Cymry,  30. 

Kynegils,  king  of  Wessex,  129,  146, 

169. 
Kynibert,  abbot,  393. 
Kynibil,  priest,  199. 
Kyniburga  (Cyneburh),  daughter  of 

Penda,  193. 
Kyniburga  the  younger,  352. 
Kynifrid,  physician,  288. 
Kynor,  342. 
Kynwise,  queen  of  Mercia,  200. 


Lammermoor,  375. 

Lancashire,  29,  375. 

Land's  End,  11. 

Lands  of  British  clergy,  41 2, 

Lantocal,  353. 

Laodicea,  council  of,  278,  280. 

Lastingham,  monastery  of,  198,  212, 

223,  238,  263,  264. 
Lateran,   church    of   the,    61,    330 ; 

council  of  the,  355. 
Latin  Church,  spirit  and  influence  of, 

222,  232,  466. 
Latrocinium,  the,  see  Ephesus. 
Laurence,    archbishop,    62,    105-107, 

109-1 II,  113,  115;  dream  of,  117; 

death  of,  1 24. 
Laurence,  St.,  deacon,  49. 
Laws,  Ethelbert's,    102 ;   Ine's,  410 ; 

Wihtred's,  427. 
Laymen,    active    in    the   conversion, 

482. 
Leicester,  see  of,  349,  350,  408,  415, 

423,  431. 
Lenten    fast,    enforcement   of,    1 73 ; 

observance  of,  192,  199,  401. 
Leo  the  Great,  44,  60,  64,  88,  325. 
Leo  III,  pope,  45. 
Leodegar  (St.  Leger),  326. 
Leominster,  convent  of,  273. 
Lerins,  isle  of,  32,  47,  254,  307. 
Leucopibia,  see  Candida  Casa. 
Lichfield,  38,  248,  262  ff.,  281,  327, 

349,  350,  415,  496. 

Lilla,  self-devotion  of,  129. 

Lincoln,  xii,  10,  ii,  139,  171,  350. 

Lindisfarne,  see  of,  158,  191,  196, 
216,  236,  300,  320,  322,  364,  373- 
375,  384  ff.,  391,  397,  400,  437. 

Liiidsey,  27;  evangelized,  139;  then 
Northumbrian,  175;  becomes  Mer- 
cian, 180;  Northumbrian,  203; 
Mercian,  207  ;  Northumbrian,  267, 
291;  finally  Mercian,  322,  340, 
398  ;  Wilfrid's  visit  to,  455-457. 

Lismore,  school  of,  184. 

Litanies,  53. 

Literature,  77,  271,  355,  380,  446. 

Littleborough,  xii,  141. 


Liturgical  matters,  21,  23,  32,  33,  41, 
44,  53,  55,  57,  61,  64,  65,  69,  91, 
103,  104,  167,  217,323. 

Liudhard,  bishop,  46,  54. 

Llanafanfaur,  bishopric  at,  35,  86. 

Llanbadarnfaur,  35,  85,  86. 

Llancarfan,  college  at,  34. 

LlandafF,  bishopric  at,  4,  31,  34,  36, 

37,  85. 
Llanddewi-Brefi,  35,  37. 
Llan  Elwy,  34. 
Llanwit  Major,  34. 
Local  religiousness,  319,  266,  403. 
Loegyrvvys  (Saxons),  29. 
Loidis,  123,  202. 

Lombards,  Lombardy,  44,63, 168,  329. 
*  Londinensium,'  a  corrupt  reading,  10, 

II. 
London,  27,  197,  410;  British  see  of, 

10,  38  ;  Saxon  see  of,  100,  197,  247, 

292,  423  ;  paganism  strong  in,  loi. 
Loth  ere,  bishop   of  Winchester,  273, 

276,  295,  297. 
Lothere,  king  of  Kent,  274,  299,  357, 

393. 
Lothian,  202,  365,  378. 
Loughderg,  184. 
Lucius,  king,  legend  of,  3,  4. 
Lugubalia,  see  Carlisle. 
Luke,  St.,  commentaries  on,  448. 
Lupus,  bishop  of  Troyes,  17-19,  21, 

22,  32. 
Luxeuil,  III. 

Lyminge,  12,  149,  179,  430. 
Lyons,  6,  17,  32  ;  see  of,  49, 50,  55, 60, 

78,  218,  422;  councils  of,  275,  493. 


M, 


Maban,  chanter,  150. 

Machutus,  35. 

Maclovius  or  Malo,  35. 

Maelgwyn,  British  king,  31,  34. 

Maes-Garmon,  22. 

Magic,  belief  in,  52,  238,  243. 

Mailduf  (Moeldubh),  294. 

Majorius,  15. 

Malchion,  priest,  276. 

Malmesbury,  84,  272,  295,  410,  444, 

462,  472,  474. 
Mamertus,  55. 
Man,  isle  of,  23,  135,  498. 
Manual   labour  of  monks,  215,  263, 

308,  309,  389,  470. 
Manuscripts,  76,  239,  271,  355,  380. 
Marcellus  of  Apamea,  78. 
Marcus  Aurelius,  5. 
Margam,  bishopric  at,  86. 
Mark,  St.,  32,  48. 
Mamage,  discipline   as  to,  65,   205, 

282. 


5i8 


Index. 


Marseilles,  49,  50. 

Martial,  2. 

Martin  I,  pope,   253,  331,  355,  358, 

359- 
Martin  V,  pope,  71. 
Martin,  St.,  2, 15,  17,  20,  78,  80,  157, 

488. 
Martin's,  St.,  Canterbury,  54,  55,  57, 

62,  78, 80 ;  at  Rome,  355  ;  at  Tours, 

157,  355- 
Martyrdom,  records  of,  470;  viewed 

as  a  baptism,  8. 
Martyrs,   British,    8,    25,    30,    496 ; 

English,  420,  500. 
Mary,  queen,  490. 
Mary,  St.,  churches  named  after,  149, 

263,  429,  435,  455,  476. 
Maserfield,  battle  of,  175,  176. 
Matins,  office  of,  315. 
Maurice,  emperor,  44,  47. 
Mavorins,  15. 
Maxima  Caesariensis,  11. 
Maximian,  emperor,  6,  9. 
Mayo,  232. 
Meath,  East,  372. 
Meaux,  174,  255,  454,  475. 
Medeshamstede  (Peterborough),  204, 

208,  292. 
Medicine,  study  of,  271,399. 
Med  way,  the,  10 1. 
Medwin,  St.,  4. 
Mellitus,  archbishop,  63,  79*  82,  100, 

loi,  106,  107,  113,  115,  119,  124, 

194,  293. 
Mellor,  St.,  6. 
Melrose  (Old),  45,  144,  214,  221,  238, 

300,  374,  375,  380. 
Mendips,  the,  30,  353. 
Menevia    (St.   David's),    35,  i^,  85, 

158. 

Meon,  342. 

Meonwaras,  the,  210,  342. 

Merchelm,  193. 

Mercia,  kingdom  of,  38,  145,  180,  200, 
291  ;  divisions  of,  203 ;  frontier, 
210;  predominant,  140,  175,  207; 
temporarily  subject  toNorthumbria, 
203  ;  evangelized,  1 94  ;  bishops  of, 
204,  208,  261,  292  ;  diocese  divided, 

349- 

Merewald,  sub-king,  193,  207,  272. 

Merewin,  208. 

Merionethshire,  85. 

Merovingian  dynasty,  418. 

Metres,  study  of,  446, 470. 

Metropolitans,  Welsh  Church  with- 
out, 37. 

Meuse,  the,  419. 

Michael,  St.,  reverence  for,  11,  353, 

399>  455.  474- 
Mid- Angles,  38,  192-194,  203,  204. 
Milan,  see  of,  168. 


Milburga,  208,  273. 
Mildred,  St.,  208,  273,  430. 

*  Minister,'  a,  1 29. 
Minor  orders,  64. 

Minors  often  passed  over,  180,  291. 
Minster,  convent  of,  52,  273,  430. 
Miracles,  stones  of,  20-23,  72-74?  93, 

177,  180,  383. 
Misfortune,   a   means  of  conversion, 

181. 

*  Missa,'  meaning  of,  57. 
Missionary  character,    81  ;    zeal,  44, 

109'  343»  416,  419,  482. 

Missions,  arguments  for,  471  ;  and 
civilization,  344  ff. ;  making  for 
unity,  190. 

Mithras,  worship  of,  12. 

Monasteries)  Scotic,  109,  168,  197 ; 
in  Northumbria,  212,  213,  307  ;  in 
Kent,  272;  Erkenwald's,  293;  dis- 
orders in,  278,  290,  480,  490 ; 
Hertford  canon  on,  278;  not  to  be 
secularized,  278,430;  kings  abdicat- 
ing to  enter,  424,  455  ;  pretended, 
428)  490. 

Monmouthshire,  85. 

Monophysitism,  357. 

Monothelite    controversy,    253,    335, 

355,  359»45i. 
Montgomery,  85, 
Morpeth,  145. 
Mounth,  the,  15. 
Mul,   West-Saxon  prince,  392,  402, 

405,  427. 
*  Mundbyrd,*  the,  428. 
Munghu,  see  Kentigern. 
Munster,  192. 
Music,  150,  248,  249,  269,  271,  294, 

296,  354-356,  369,  447. 
Mynyw,  see  Menevia. 


N. 


Names,  a  religious  change  of,  199, 

249,  404,  420,  421. 
Natalias,  118. 
Natanleod,  26. 
Nathaniel,  abbot,  63,  249. 
Native  English  bishops,  182. 
Nazarites,  464. 

Nechtan  (Naiton),  Pictish  king,  468. 
Nechtansmere,  377. 
Nen,  river,  433. 

Nennius,  4,  21,  22,  26-28,  39,  202. 
Neocaesarea,  canons  of,  277. 
Neustria,   51,    220,    241,    255,    326, 

327- 
Newcastle,  194. 
Nicene  council,  the,  12,  66,  88,  89, 

105,  192,  225,  274,  276-278,  323, 

359»  361. 


Index. 


519 


Nidd,  council  of  the,  458. 

Ninian,  St.,  14,  15,  169,  444. 

Nocturnal  office,  315. 

Nodder,  council  of  the,  473. 

Norfolk,  12,  27,  119,  285. 

Northumberland,  28,  338. 

Northumbria,  two  kingdoms  in^  28, 
179;  united,  39,  123,  152,  1865 
national  acceptance  of  Christianity 
by,  134  ;  political  greatness  of)  123, 
I35>  203;  ecclesiastical)  178;  in- 
vaded by  Mercians,  146,  180,  200  ; 
political  decline  of,  378  ;  attitude  of 
church  of,  in  Wilfrid's  case,  391  ; 
religious  decline  of,  234,  480. 

Norway,  82,  120. 

Norwich,  285. 

Nothbert,  bishop  of  Elmham,  456. 

Nothelm,  60,  63. 

Nottinghamshire,  140. 

Novatianism,  67,  261,  465. 

Nuns'  habit,  the,  188,  287,  38^* 

Nutscelles,  monastery  of,  470. 


O. 


Oak,  St.  Augustine's,  84,  497. 
Oaths,   36,   329,  458 ;    men   in   holy 

orders  excused  from,  429. 
*Oblates,'  388. 
Offa,  East-Saxon  king,  477. 
Oftfor,  bishop  of  Worcester,  56)  272, 

415,  416,  423,  426. 
Oiddi,  priest,  341. 
Old  Sarum,  472. 

Old  Testament,  questions  on  the,  447. 
Omophorion,  the,  68. 
Ordinations,  32,  196,  221,   353,  254J 

269,  311. 
Origen,  2,  6,  59,  359. 
'  Original  sin,'  16. 
Orkney,  23. 

Orleans,  councils  of,  42,  68,  80. 
Orthodoxy  of  English  Church,  335. 
Osfrid,  reeve,  338. 
Osfrid,  son  of  Edwin,  128,  146,  148. 
Oshere,  Hwiccian  sub-king,  297,  349, 

351,423- 
Osred,  king  of  Northumbria,  458^ 
Osric,  king  of  Deira,  147,  179. 
Osric,  Hwiccian  sub-kingj   297,  350, 

352,416. 
Osthryd,    Mercian   queen,   176,   341, 

431. 

Ostia,  bishop  of,  332. 

Oswald,  Mercian  prince,  352. 

Oswald,  St.,  123,  150  fF.  ;  character  of, 
153,  163;  marriage  of,  169;  death 
of,  175,  176,347,449,456,482. 

Oswestry,  175. 

Oswiu,  St.,  179,  185,  186,482. 


Oswy   (Oswiu),   king,    123,   179-186^, 
188,  193  fF.,  243,  250;  death,  266, 

379- 
Othona,  197. 
Oudoceus,  bishop  of  Llandaff,  36,  73, 

85. 
Oundle,  monastery  of,  248,  479. 
Ouse,  the,  27. 
Owin  (Ouini),  263  flP. 
Oxford,  171,  176. 
Oxfordshire,  29,  179,  351. 


Padarn,  St.,  34,  467. 

Padda,  priest,  341. 

Paegnalsech,  237. 

Paga,  reevC)  376. 

Paganism,  Teutonic,  25,  39,  131,  169  ; 

concessions   to,    119-;    reaction    to- 

wardvS,  58,  116,  238,  328  ;    survival 

of,    78-82,    120,    426,    428,    436; 

adaptation  of  customs  of>  81.     See 

Idolatry. 
Paintings^  sacred,  52,  355,  390. 
Palestine,  14. 
Pall,  the,  68,  148. 
Palladius,  St.,  19. 
Palliiisburn,  137. 
Palm  Sunday,  192-. 
Pancras,  St.,  62,  250. 
Pandon,  194. 
Pannonia,  329. 
Pantheon  at  Kome,  73,  253. 
Papal  claims  and  influence,  35,  70- 

72,   159,   233,   250,    251,  321-325, 

337.  396,  397,  461. 
Paris,  37,  46,  51,  66,  157,  174,  209, 

255- 

*  Parish,'  used  for  diocese,  209,  278, 

280. 
Parochial  system,  germs  of,  196,  269, 

407,  460,  494- 
Parret,  river,  30,  210,  35  2^ 
Paschal  question^  see  Easter. 

*  Pastoral  Rule'  of  St.  Gregory,  44,49, 

56. 
Patience,  trials  of,  125,  128,  483. 
Patiens,  bishop,  17. 
Patriarchate,  the  original  Roman,  70, 

*  Patrician,'  title  of,  47. 

Patrick,  St.,  14,  21,  30,  32,  33,  65, 

81. 
Patriotic  feeling,  369. 
Paul,  biographer  of  Gregory,  22,  40. 
Paul  Hen^  34. 
Paul,  St.,  I,  3,  49>  59,  92j  252,  257, 

297,  359- 
Paul'Sj  St.,  London,  100,  293,  424. 
Paul's,  St.,  Rome,  476. 


520 


Index, 


Paulinus,  St.,  63,  127-150,  162,  167, 
182,  310,  482  ;  character  and  real 
effect  of  his  work,  138,  149. 

Pavia,  329. 

Peada,  sub-king  in  Mercia,  193-204, 
206. 

Peanfahel,  364. 

Pecthelm,  bishop  of  Whithem,  444. 

Pega,  sister  of  Guthlac,  433. 

Peg  well  Bay,  51, 

Pelagianism,  15-22,  35  ;  texts  in  the 
controversy,  20. 

Pelagius  II,  pope,  41,  43,  113. 

Pembrokeshire,  85. 

Penance,  35,  36,  168,  290,  411. 

Penda,  king  of  Mercia,  145,  169,  173, 
175,  180,  181,  193,  194,  200-202, 
272,  409,  456;  a  saying  of,  194; 
slew  five  kings,  203  ;  death  of,  ?02  j 
his  Christian  children,  jp^. 

Penfahel,  364. 

Penitential,  see  Theodore. 

Pent,  river,  196,  197. 

Penwald,  earl,  431. 

People,  right  of,  in  episcopal  elections, 
491. 

Perctarit  (Bertarid),  Lombard  king, 

329- 
Pestilence,    'the  yellow,'    230,    237, 

265,  293,  305,  346,  383,  389. 
Peter,  abbot,  62,  104,  113,  140. 
Peter,  St.,  32,  69,  93,  117,  183,  464, 

465  ;  chains  of,  20. 
Peter's,  St.,  at  Rome,  61,  331,  354. 
Peter  of  Alexandria,  106. 
Pevensey  (Anderida),  26, 
Philip,  St.,  3. 
Phocas,  44,  50. 
Pickering  hills,  198. 
Picts,   15,  21,   23,   24,  81,  153,  266, 

335.  364.  375.  378,  468. 
Pilgrimage,  14,  266,  380,  403. 
Pilkington,  bishop,  490. 
Pippin,  Frankish  duke,  418,  42P. 
Piran,  St.,  30. 
Pius  IX,  pope,  71. 
Playing  on  names,  43,  143. 
Plegwin,  monk,  475. 
Poly  crates,  87. 
Pomponia  Graecina,  3. 
Ponthieu,  256. 
Pontifical  catalogues,  4. 
Poor,  charity  to  the,  221,  233,  400, 

425- 
Popes,  3,  10,  14,  17,  18,  40,  41,  44, 
45,  60,  63,  65,69,  71,  79,  124,  148, 
149,  199,  219,  253,  299,  324,  325, 

330.  331.  354»  391,  403*  449,  478. 
Popular  saying  quoted,  203  ;   verses 

quoted,  see  Ballads. 
Portus  Romanus,  bishop  of,  332. 
Pothinus,  bishop,  50. 


Potitus,  14. 

Powys,  kingdom  of,  22,  29,  31,  98. 

*  Praepositus,'  office  of,  45,  214. 
Preaching,  195,  305,  377,"  381,  474. 
Piecedency,  as  distinct  from   supre- 
macy of  Rome,  70. 

Pretiosus,  45. 
Priestholm,  isle  of,  145. 

*  Privilegia,'  see  Exemptions. 
Processions,  52,  53,  445. 
Property  of  churches,  65,  103. 
Prosper,  4,  16-18. 
Protasius,  bishop,  47. 
Provence,  47,  55. 
Provincial  synods,  see  Councils. 
Psalter,  devotional  use  of  the,  16 2,  30 1, 

302,  390,  479;  versions  of  the,  217. 
Puch,  earl,  460. 
Pudens,  2. 

Purgatory,  belief  in,  340. 
Putta,  bishop,  248,  259,  276,  299,  300, 

350- 
Pyrrhus,  359. 

Q. 

Quartodecimans,  87-90, 112,  227,  464, 

466. 
Queensferry,  364. 


R. 


Radbod,  Frisian  king,  417,  418. 

Radnor,  85. 

Raids,  392,  431. 

Ramsbury,  472. 

Ramsgate,  51. 

Ravenna,  23,  44,  69. 

Reader,  office  of,  403. 

Reccared,  Spanish  king,  277. 

Reculver  (Regulburh),  51,  60,  272, 

4?2,  430. 
Redbridge,  394. 

*  Redemption  of  souls,  for,'  395,  476. 
Rederech  (Rhydderc),  king,  29,  30. 
Redfrid,  reeve,  355,  256. 
Redwald,  king  of  East-Anglia,  ii9ff. 
Beedford,  394. 
Beeves,  58,  59,  187,  255. 
Beged,  28,  29. 
Regionary  bishops,  168. 
Begnum,  the  town,  343. 
Beims,  50, 
Relics,  20,  21,177,  250,335,337,445, 

449,  454. 
Remains  of  British-Christian  times, 

few,  12,  54. 
Rendlesham,  205. 
Renunciations,  baptismal,  345. 
Reordination,  question  of,  261,  489. 
Repton,  38,  213,  432. 
Reservation  of  the  Eucharist,  315. 


Index. 


521 


Restitutus,  bishop  of  London,  9,  245. 

Retford,  123. 

Retreat,  places  of  devotional,  162,  303, 

400,  401. 
Retrospect  of  our  national  conversion, 

481-483. 

Rhenish  Prussia,  419. 

Rhine,  the,  418,  420. 

Rhone,  the,  49,  142. 

Ricbert,  141. 

Richborough  (Rutupi.ae),  ix,  51,  52. 

Ricimer,  47. 

Ricula,  sister  of  Ethelbert,  100. 

Ripon,  138,  215,  221,  244,  246,  267, 
268,  308,  341,  346,  391,  396,  412, 
418,  442,  450,  458,  476,  477,  479. 

Ritual,  see  Liturgical  matters. 

Rochester,  loi,  119,  124,  148,  190, 
199,  272,  280,  299,  351,  423,  427, 
429,  430. 

Rogations,  55,  103,  237. 

Romanus,  bishop  of  Rochester,  124, 
140,  192,  223. 

Rome,  41,  48,  49,  51,  55,  61,  66,  70, 
79,  88,  89,  192,  249,  321  ff.,  336, 
420,  426,  449,  450  ff.,  476  ;  rule  of, 
in  Britain,  traces  of,  61,  125,  144, 
149,  376  ;  law,  66j  297  ;  position 
of  bishops  of,  see  Papal  claims ; 
Easter  rule  of,  88,  89,  192  ;  visits  to, 
218,  330,  403,  426;  not  obeyed  in 
Wilfrid's  case,  460;  England's  in- 
debtedness to,  498. 

Romney  Marsh,  342. 

Ronan,  191,  223. 

Rosnat,  15. 

Rouen,  6,  14,  174,  422. 

Rufinianus,  63. 

Rum,  son  of  Urbgen,  135. 

Rustics,  work  among,  212,  239,  296. 

S. 

Sabert  (Sigebert),  East-Saxon  king, 

100,  115,  195,424- 
Sacerdos,  a  presbyter,  10. 
Sacramentaries,  44,  57,  64,  65,  104. 
Sacrilege,  65,429. 
SiBthryd,  abbess,  174. 
Sseward  (Seward),  East-Saxon  king, 

115,  119,  424. 
Saints,  Irish  '  orders '  of,  36. 
Saints,  lives  of,  303,  381. 
Salvian,  25,  68. 
Samaritans,  119,  141. 
Sampson,  St.,  of  Dol,  35,  37. 
Sanctuary,  privilege  of,  103,  188,  386, 

411,  428. 
Sandwich,  243. 
Saone,  river,  50,  142. 
Sardica,  canons  of,  13,  88,  278,  280, 

281,  323. 


Sardinia,  58. 

Sarum,  28. 

Saxon  Chronicle,  9, 14,  24,  26,  28,  39, 
40. 

Saxons,  harass  Britons,  21-23  ;  fierce- 
ness of,  24,  25, 47;  conquest  by,  25- 
29,  38,  84;  Welsh  hatred  of,  465- 
467.  See  East,  South,  West-Saxons. 

*  Saxon  Shore,'  the,  23,  27. 
Saxony,  419. 

Saxulf,  bishop  of  Lichfield,  204,  292, 

299.  300,  350,  4o8>  415- 
Scarborough,  363. 
Scaurus,  45. 
Schools,  142,  143,  271,  272,  294,  429, 

480. 

*  Scot,'  a  due,  411. 

Scotic  episcopacy,  155-157  ;   liturgy, 

32 ;  mission  reviewed,  232  ;  monastic 

and  penitential  rules,  severity  of, 

168. 
Scotland,  18,  24,  76,  202. 
Scots,  39,  6*],  97. 
Scripture,  study  of,  161,  162,  183,  212, 

219,  251,  264,  309,  311,  368,  380, 

400,  422,  447,  470. 
Sebbi,  East-Saxon  king,  238,  247,  316, 

409,  424,  425,  482. 
Seclusion,  Celtic  saints'  love  of,  38, 

158, 162. 
'  Secretarium,'  a,  182,  331. 
Seghine,  abbot  of  Hy,  154,  157,  184. 
Selby,  23. 

Selsey,  see  of,  346,  470. 
Selwood,  29. 
Sens,  255,417,422. 
Sergius  I,  pope,  359,  403,  419,  420, 

43i»  438,  440>  445»  450>  452,  460. 
Sermons  after  service,  296. 
'  Service  of  God,'  monastic  life  called, 

197,  216,411. 
Seukesham,  298. 
Severianus,  16. 

Severn,  11,  84,  112,  171,  465. 
Severus,  bishop  of  Treves,  22. 
Severus,  emperor,  7,  27. 
Sexburga  (Sexburh),  Kentish  queen, 

I73-I75>  289. 
Sexburga,   West-Saxon    queen,    273, 

288. 
Sexred,  East-Saxon,  115,  119. 
Sheppey,   convent  at,   60,  174,  175, 

430- 
Sherborne,  see  of,  112,  272,  469,  471, 

472. 
Shetland,  15. 
Shire-mote,  the,  410. 
Shrewsbury  (Pengwern),  29. 
Shropshire,  85,  175. 
Sicilian  bishops,  53. 
Sick,  baptism  of  the,  428. 
Sickness,  trials  of,  310,  311,  385, 


522 


Index. 


Siddenacester  (Sidnacester),  bishopric 
of  Lindsey  at,  349,  350. 

Sidonius  Apollinarig,  19,  47,  496. 

Sigebert  I,  see  Sabert. 

Sigebert  I,  of  Austrasia,  49. 

Sigebert,  son  of  Sabert,  115,  119. 

Sigebert  the  Good,  East-Saxon  king, 
194.  195,  205,  482. 

Sio[ebert  the  Learned,  East-Anglian 
king,  142,  163,  173,  424,  482. 

Sigebert  the  Little,  East-Saxon  king, 
119,  195,  238. 

Sigfrid,  abbot  of  Wearmouth,  309, 
389,  A02. 

Sighard,  East-Saxon  king,  425. 

Sighere,  East-Saxon  king,  238,  424, 
478. 

Silchester,  12,  85. 

Simon  Magus,  93,  463. 

Simony,  31,  68,  247,  248. 

Sinodun,  170. 

Siricius,  pope,  14. 

Sisinnius,  452. 

Sister-in-law,  marriage  with  a,  66. 

Sittingbourne,  429. 

Slack,  near  Huddersfield,  138. 

Slake  bay,  the,  365. 

Slavery,  29,  41,  42,  58,  164,  346,  411, 
428. 

Slavs,  58. 

Socratic  process  in  missionary  teach- 
ing, 471- 

Soissons,  47,  51. 

Solway,  the,  15,  28. 

Somerset,  30,  463,  467,  469,  474. 

Song,  love  of,  296,  312. 

Southampton,  23. 

'South  Anglia,'  351. 

South-Saxons,  kingdom  of,  25,  178, 
210  ;  isolation  and  barbarism  of, 
211,  243,  343;  evangelized,  344ff-» 
391  ;  b'shopric  of,  see  Selsey. 

Southwell,  141. 

Spain,  9,  13,  70,  91,  275,  361. 

Sparrow,  simile  of  the,  133. 

Speen,  85. 

Spiritual  sonship,  458. 

Sponsorship,  170,  206,411. 

Stable-gate,  Canterbury,  55-57. 

Stamford  Bridge,  129,  221. 

Stately  ceremonial,  use  of,  52. 

Stephen,  abbot  of  Lerins,  47,  49. 

Step-mother,  marriage  with  a,  114, 
115. 

Stilicho,  24. 

Stoneham,  393. 

Stour,  river,  51. 

^fcow,  350,  409. 

Strasburg,  329. 

Strathclyde,  29,153,378.  SeeCumbria. 

Streanaeshalch,  see  Whitby. 

Subdiaconate,  the,  253. 


Subsistences  or  Persons,  359. 

Succat,  see  Patrick. 

Suetonius  Paulinus,  i. 

Suffolk,  27,  119,  143,  144,  199,  205. 

Sulpicius  Severus,  5,  13,  78,  79,  89, 

464. 
Sunday,  observance  of,  166,  234,  376, 

411,  428. 
Superficial  conversion,  141,  238,  328. 
Superstitions,  current,  177,405,  434, 

466. 
Supplying  omitted  ceremonies,  190. 
Surrey,  171,  293,469. 
Swale,  rivers,  xii,  6o,  137. 
Swebhard,  usurper  in  Kent,  424,  427. 
Swefred,  East-Saxon  king,  425. 
Swidbert,  missionary  bishop,  419. 
Swidhelm,  king  of  East- Anglia,  186. 
Swindon,  28,  39. 
Switzerland,  4. 
Syagidus,  47. 
Symmachus,  pope,  60. 
*  Syncellus,'  a,  45. 
Synods,    British,    35,    275;    English 

provincial,  of  bishops    only,    493 ; 

laymen  present  at,  not  members  of, 

493;    lax  use  of  term,    223,   273, 

410. 


T. 


Tables,  of  principal  events,  501  ;  of 
royal  and  episcopal  succession,  502  ; 
of  genealogies,  504. 

Tacitus,  7,  195. 

Tadcaster,  nunnery  at,  188,  212. 

Tanfield,  138. 

Tarsus,  252,  257,  406. 

'  Tata,'  the  name,  126,  149. 

Tatbert,  abbot,  477,  478. 

Tattrid,  350. 

Tatwin,  432,  433. 

Taunton,  463. 

Tay,  river,  28,  377. 

Tees,  river,  28,  43,  180. 

Teilo,  bishop  of  Llandaff,  37,  73,  85. 

Teilian,  St.,  36. 

Temples,  pagan,  treatment  of,  78. 

Temporal  help  instrumental  towards 
conversion,  344. 

Temporal  motives,  appeal  to,  139, 
471, 

Temptation,  varieties  of,  305. 

Terracina,  80. 

Tertullian,  5,  8,  68,  82. 

Tette,  431. 

Teutons,  52,  54,  56,  ^d,  264,  310, 
483  ;  how  far  attracted  or  repelled 
by  Christianity,  54,  131,  134. 

Tewdric,  Welsh  king,  98. 

Thadioc,  bishop  of  York,  38. 


Index. 


523 


Thames,  river,  11,  51,  loo,  170,  196, 

197,  298. 
Thanes  (the^s),  139,  133,  163,  185, 

187,  216,  218,  234,  345>440- 
Thanet,  isle  of,  ix,  51,  52,  273,  430. 
Theodebert  II,  king  of  Australia,  49, 

50,  78. 

Theoderic  (or  Theodoric)  II,  king  of 
Burgundy,  49,  50,  78. 

Theoderic  III,  326. 

Theodore,  archbishop,  52,  65,  71,  251, 
252 ;  arrival  at  Canterbury,  256 ; 
character,  257,  319,  321,  409;  his 
relations  with  Chad,  259  ff. ;  holds 
council  of  Hertford,  274;  divides 
East- Anglian  diocese,  2  85 ;  con- 
secrates Heddi,  297  ;  consecrates 
Gebmund,  300 ;  his  scheme  for 
diocesan  divisions,  319  ;  in  North- 
umbria,  320  ;  divides  York  diocese, 
^id.  ;  as  political  peacemaker,  341  ; 
divides  Mercian  diocese,  349,  352  ; 
holds  council  of  Hatfield,  357  ; 
deposes  Winfrid,  292  ;  and  Tun- 
bert,  372 ;  consecrates  Cuthbert, 
374 ;  reconciled  to  Wilfrid,  395  ft.  ; 
teaches  in  school  of  Canterbury, 
271,  399;  his  penitential,  52,  282, 
406  ;  his  death,  406,  407  j  burial, 
408,  417. 

Theodore  of  Mopsuestia,  44. 

Theodore  of  Pharan,  359. 

Theodoret,  2,  44,  78. 

Theodosius  I,  24,  34,  78. 

Theodric,  *the  Flame-bearer,'  28. 

Theon,  bishop  of  London,  38. 

Theophilus  of  Alexandria,  68,  78,  89. 

Thetford,  285. 

Thirsk,  181. 

Thomas,  bishop  of  Dunwich,  181,  190, 

Thor,  T20. 

Thorney  island,  100. 

*  Three  Articles,*  the,  44. 

*  Threshold  of  Apostles,'  the,  250. 
Thunor,  thane,  25,  80,  272. 
Tibba,  477. 

Tidlin,  reeve,  339. 

Tilbury  (Tilaburg),  196,  197. 

Tiovulfingacaestir,  xi,  140,  141. 

Tithes,  to  the  poor,  63,  400. 

Titillus,  notary,  276. 

'  Tiu  '  (Tiw),  25. 

Tobias,  bishop  of  Rochester,  272,  429. 

Toledo,  councils  of,  45,  63,  361. 

Tonbert,  husband  of  Ethelred,  263, 

286. 
Tondhere,  187. 
Tonsure,  question  as  to,  92,  219,  231, 

253>  463,  466. 
Tor  of  St.  Michael,  11,  353. 
Torksey,  xi,  141. 


Torthelm,  abbot,  307. 

Tours,  49,  50,  80,  355,  362. 

Trajan,  82. 

Travelling,  difficulty  of,  499. 

Trees,  idolatry  connected  with,  79. 

Trent,    river,    140,     160,    193,    204, 

340. 
Trentham,  nunnery  at,  456. 
Treves  or  Trier,  22. 
Trine  immersion,  91. 
Trinity,  doctrine  of  the,  359. 
'Trinoda  necessitas,'  the,  427. 
Tripartite  sense  of  Scripture,  470. 
Trophimus,  60. 
Troyes,  17. 

Trumbert,  monk,  264,  368. 
Trumhere,  priest,  187,  208. 
Trumwine,  bishop  of  Abercorn,  365, 

373,  378. 
Tuda,  bishop  of  Lindisfarne,  56,  223, 

236,  237. 
•Tufa,'  the  banner,  136. 
Tunbert,  bishop  of  Hexham,  308,  364, 

372. 
Tweed,  river,  137,  214,  238,  375. 
'Twelve  boys,'  Aidan's,  161,  244. 
Twyford,  'synod'  of,  373. 
Tyne,  river,  28,  384,  400. 
Tynemouth,  xi,  187,  212. 
*Type'  of  Constans,  the,  359. 
Types  and  antitypes,  390. 
Tyrhtel)  bishop  of  Hereford,  408. 


U. 

Uff'a,  119. 

Ufl&ngas,  119. 

Unction,  32,  91. 

Union,  the  Personal,  in  Christ,  35S. 

Unity,  influences  making  for,  190. 

Unity,  national,  promoted  by  Church 

progress,  190,  284. 
Universal  bishop,  title  of,  71,  450. 
Unnust,  vassal-king,  378. 
'Unusual  arrangement,'  the,  154. 
Unworldliness  of  Scotic  clergy,  233. 
Uriconiuin,  29. 
Usk,  river,  8,  10,  11. 
Utrecht  (Trajectum),  418,  421. 
Utta,  abbot,  188,  194. 


V. 


'Vacant'  bishops,  183. 
Valentia,  11. 
Valentinian  T,  24. 
Valentinian  III,  23,  69. 
Various  agencies  in  the  English  con- 
version, 481. 
Veleda,  310. 


524 


Index, 


Venantins  Fortunatus,  2,  9. 

Venedotia,  85. 

Ver,  river,  7. 

Verca,  abbess,  xi,  384. 

Verulaniium,  7-9,  ii,  20. 

Vessels,  sacred,  148,  268,  420. 

Vestments,  307,  388,  429. 

Viaticum,  the,  315,  363. 

Victorius,  cycle  of,  87,  89,  no,  250, 

464. 
Victriciiis,  bishop,  visit  of,  14. 
Vieime,  6,  49,  50,  55,  71,  271,  422. 
Vigilius,  pope,  69. 
Vigils,  215,  301. 

Virgilius,  archbishop  of  Aries,  60,  68. 
Visigothic  Arianism,  361. 
Vision?,  I44»433- 
Visitations,  diocesan,  246,  267,  382 ; 

provincial,  256. 
Vitalian,  pope,  250  ff. 
Viventius,  15. 
Vortigern,  22. 
Tortipor,  31. 
Vosges,  109. 

W. 

Wagele,  237. 

Walbottle,  194. 

Waldhere,    bishop   of   London,   424, 

425- 

Wales,  10,  23,  24,  31,  34-38,  84,  85, 
112, 121,  153,  467,  472  ;  North,  22, 
31  ;  South,  16,465  ;   West,  30,  467. 

Wallingford,  30. 

*  Walls,'  the,  11,  15,  151. 

Walstod,  monk,  386. 

Walton,  194. 

Wanborough  (Wodensburg),  battle  of, 

39- 

Wantage,  172. 

Wantsum,  or  Wantsome,  the,  vii,  51. 

Wareham,  church  at,  444. 

Warwick,  85. 

Wash,  the,  23. 

Wear,  river,  188,  306,  310,  381,  388. 

Wearmouth,  monastery  of,  306,  317, 

354,  355,  366,  367,  389,  390.  438. 

Weedon,  nunnery  at,,  456. 

Weeg,  bishopric  at,  86. 

Welland,  the,  433. 

Wells,  474. 

Welsh,  the,  3,  4,  22,  24-26,  29,  30, 
33 ;  did  nothing  for  conversion  of 
English,  33,  112,  467,  481,  498. 

Wendover,  25. 

Wenlock,  nunnery  at,  144,  478. 

Werburga,  St.  (Werburh),  207,  456. 

'Wergild,'  273,  341,  411. 

West-Saxons,  kingdom  of,  26,  84,  171, 
469 ;  hostile  to,  afterwards  allied 
with, Northumbria,  129, 169;  hostile 


to  Mercia,  180;  internal  divigions 
of,  130,  274,  297,  350;  predominant 
in  the  south,  392,  393, 403  ;  legisla- 
tion in,  410;  evangelized,  168-172, 
190, 199  ;  bishops  of,  171,  183,  209, 
273,  297,  469. 

Westminster,  100. 

Westmoreland,  29. 

West-Riding,  the,  28. 

Whalley,  141,  237. 

Whitby  (Streanseshalch,  Streones" 
halh),  41,  213;  conference,  223- 
231,  238,  266,  287,  293,  310,  317, 

320,  350,  362,  363,  373,  379,  399, 
415,432. 

White  Field,  council  of,  468. 

Wliite  garments  of  the  new-baptized, 
136,  404. 

Whithern,  see  Candida  Casa. 

Whitland,  Welsh  college  at,  34. 

Whitsuntide  baptism,  37,  130. 

Whittingham,  373. 

Wictbert,  missionary,  417,  418. 

Wighard,  archbishop,  249. 

Wight,  Isle  of,  conquered  by  West 
Saxons,  afterwards  by  Mercians, 
and  annexed  to  Sussex,  210,  342; 
recovered  by  Wessex,  393 ;  evan- 
gelized, 394. 

Wigtonshire,  15. 

Wihtred,  king  of  Kent,  61,  405; 
laws  of,  427. 

Wilfaresdun,  187. 

Wilfrid,  abbot,  434. 

Wilfrid,  St.  (Wilfrith>,  early  life,  216  ; 
at  Lyons  and  Rome,  218,  219;  at 
Ripon,  221  ;  his  aims,  222  ;  bishop 
of  York,  240  ;  in  Mercia  and  Kent, 
248,  259  ff. ;  at  York,  267 ;  his 
church-building,  267,  455 ;  his  dele- 
gates at  Hertford,  275,  276,  287; 
troubles  with  Egfrid,  317,  318  ;  his 
grandeur,  318  ;   appeals  to  Rome, 

321,  323;  excluded  from  North- 
umbria, 322  ;  missionary  ardour  of, 
327,  344;  in  Friesland,  327;  in 
Lombardy,  329  ;  at  Rome,  330  ff. ; 
return  home,  336  ff.  ;  imprisoned, 
338  ;  released,  339  ;  second  sojourn 
in  Mercia,  340 ;  apostle  of  Sussex, 
342  ff.,  499 ;  St.  Lewinna  his  convert, 
500 ;  claims  ignored  by  Cuthbert, 
390;  reconciiiation  with  Theodore, 
395  ;  restored  to  York,  396  ff.,  409  ; 
administers  two  other  dioceses,  397 ; 
troubles  renewed,  412-414;  in 
Mercia,  415;  consecrated  Oftfor, 
416  ;  consecrated  Swidbert,  419  ; 
at  Leicester,  423,  431,  437;  at 
Easterfield,  439 ;  his  second  appeal 
to  Rome,  442 ;  in  Mercia,  443 ; 
helped    by    Aldhelm,    446;    third 


Index. 


525 


journey  to  Rome,  448  ;  at  Rome, 
449  tf. ;  ill  at  Meaux,  454 ;  met 
Ethelred  at  Bardney,  456  ;  claim 
refused  again  by  Aldfrld,  457  ; 
returned  to  Ripon,  458  ;  at  council 
of  the  Nidd,  458,  459 ;  end  of 
*  cause,'  460,  46 1  ;  last  arrange- 
ments, 476  ;  in  Mercia,  477,  478 ; 
death,  479  ;  burial  at  Ripon,  479 ; 
character,  269,  317,  327,  342,  461, 
480. 

Willibald,  80. 

Willibrord,  St.,  178,  268,  328,  417  fF., 
420,421,449. 

Wiltaburg,  421. 

Wiltshire,  469. 

Wimbledon,  battle  of,  28. 

Wimborne,  213,  473. 

Winbert,  abbot,  470, 

Winchester,  catliedral  of,  183  ;  see 
of,  founded,  209. 

Winfrid,  see  St.  Boniface. 

Winfrid,  bishop  of  Lichfield,  266,  276, 
292,  327. 

Wini,  bishop  of  Winchester  and 
London,  209,  210,  241,  245,    247, 

275- 
Winwidfield,  battle  of,  202,  212,  364, 

378. 
Witburga,  St.,  175. 
Witenagemot,  the,  102,  132,  240,  273, 

337,  410,  427>  429*  459- 

Woden,  25. 

Wodensburg,  39. 

Wooden  churches,  see  Church  build- 
ing. 

Worcester,  85,  210,  272,  349,  350, 
408,  415,  4i6,  423,  426,  478. 


Worksop,  84. 

Wreckers  in  Sussex,  243,  343. 

Wrekin,  the,  29. 

Wulfard,  354. 

Wulfhere,  king  of  Mercia,  wars   of, 

207,  211,  291  ;  supreme  over  Essex, 

207,  238,  247 ;  beneficent  to  Church, 

248,  263;  death,  291. 
Wulfilac,  20. 
Wulframn,     bishop     of    Sens,     3  2  3, 

417. 
Wuscfrea,  son  of  Edwin,  184. 
Wye,  river,  300. 


Yarmouth,  27. 

Yevering,  137, 

Yffi,  son  of  Osfrid,  148. 

Ynys-vitrin,  see  Avalon. 

York,  city  of,  27,  132,  147,  310,  340, 
376  ;  British  bishopric  of,  9  ff.,  37, 
158  ;  English  bishopric  of,  73,  136, 
246,  272  ;  design  of  an  archbishopric 
long  unfulfilled,  76,  275.  480  ;  over- 
large  diocese  of,  281,  320  ;  divided, 
322,  439;  cathedral,  134,  136,  267, 
374,412,497. 

Yorkshire,  23,  27,  43,  44,  129,  146, 
181,  197,  268,  439,  457. 

Ythancsestir,  196,  197. 

Yule,  82. 


Z. 


Zacharias,  pope,  x. 
Zuyder  Zee,  327. 


ERKATA. 


Page  12.  note  3,  1.  5,  for  is  read  in 

170,  1.  15, /or  Sinodum  read  Sinodun 
236,  note  3,  for  Wilfred  read  Wilfrid 
254,  1.  6,  for  some  read  such 
347,  1.  20,  for  Ebba  read  Eaba 
367,  1.  4,  deUtQ  *  i.  e.  the  23rd/ 


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"NoeUi  (A.)  Catechismus  sive 

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ll.  IS. 

Trialogus.      With    the 

Supplement  now  first  edited.     By 
Gotthard  Lechler.     Svo.    7s. 


5.     LITURGIOLOGY. 


Cardweirs  Tivo  Books  of  Com- 
mon Prayer,  set  forth  by  authority 
in  the  Reign  of  King  Edward  VI, 
compared  with  each  other.  Third 
Edition.    Svo.     7s. 

r History  of  Conferences 

on  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  from 
1 55 1   to  1690.     Svo.     7s.  6d. 

The  Gelasian  Sacramentary. 

Liber  Sacramenforum  Bomanae  Ec- 
clesiae.  Edited,  with  Introduction, 
Critical  Notes,  and  Appendix,  by 
H.  A.  Wilson,  M.A.  Medium  Svo. 
iSs. 

Liturgies,    Eastern    and 

"Western.  Edited,  with  Introduc- 
tions and  Appendices,  by  F.  E. 
Brightman,  M.A.,  on  the  Basis  of 
the  former  Work  by  C.  E.  Ham- 
mond, M.A. 
Vol.  I.  Eastern  Liturgies.  Demy 
Svo.     i^  IS. 

Helps   to   the  Study  of  the 

Book  of  Comnion  Prayer  :  Being 
a  Companion  to  Church  Worship, 
By  the  Very  Rev.  W.  R.  Stephens, 


D.D.,  Dean  of  Winchester.  Crown 
Svo.  3s.  6d. 
Leofric  Missal,  The,  as  used 
in  the  Cathedral  of  Exeter  during 
the  Episcopate  of  its  first  Bishop, 
A.D.  1050-1072  ;  together  with  some 
Account  of  the  Red  Book  of  Derby, 
the  Missal  of  Robert  of  Jumi^ges, 
&c.  Edited,  with  Introduction  and 
Notes,  by  F.  E.  Warren,  B.D.,  F.S.  A. 
4to,  half- morocco,  il.  15s. 

Maskell.    Ancient  Liturgy  of 

the  Church  of  England,  according  to 
the  uses  of  Sarum,  York,  Hereford, 
and  Bangor,  and  the  Roman  Liturgy 
arranged  in  parallel  columns,  with 
preface  and  notes.  By  W.  Maskell, 
M.A.     Third  Edition.     Svo.     15s. 

Monumenta    Ritualia 

Ecclesiae  Anglicanae.  The  occasional 
Offices  of  the  Church  of  England 
according  to  the  old  use  of  Salisbury, 
the  Prymer  in  English,  and  other 
prayers  and  forms,  with  disserta- 
tions   and    notes.      Second  Editio7i. 

3  vols.       Svo.       21.  I  OS. 

Warren.      The   Liturgy  and 

Ritual  of  the  Celtic  Church.  By  F.  E. 
Warren,  B.D.     Svo.     14s. 


Oxfotb 

AT  THE   CLARENDON    PRESS 
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